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SIX LECTURES 



THEOLOGY AND NATURE. 



I. ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

II. RELIGION OF NATURE. 

III. THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

IV. SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 
V. SIN AND DEATH. 

VI. HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 



TOGETHER WITH THE OUTLINE OP 

A PLAN FOR A HUMANE ENTERPRISE, 

AND AN 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 



By EMMA HARDINGE.^tc^j. 
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REPORTED BY R. R. HITT. 
1860. 



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Entered according to the Act of Congress in the year I860, by 

W. C . BEUSON, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 

Northern District of Illinois. 



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PRE F A_ C E . 



The following series of Lectures was delivered in 
the course of three Sundays, during the months of 
October and November, 1860, at Kingsbury Hall, 
Chicago, 111. They excited a wide and profound 
interest at the time ; and the large audience that 
greeted Miss Hardinge, on her first appearance — 
their deep attention and intelligent appreciation, 
continued unabated throughout the series. The 
discourses were taken down, as delivered, by R. R. 
Hitt, Esq., stenographic reporter of the Chicago 
Press and Tribune ; and are now published from his 
short-hand notes, without revision — nothing having 
been suggested or added by the speaker, except 
the autobiographical introduction. 



TO THE READER 



Ere I can consent to submit the following pages to the criticism of 
promiscuous minds, I must offer a few remarks on their composition, of 
an introductory as well as deprecatory character. The course of " Six 
Lectures " herewith presented, was given through my lips, under what 
I believe to be the influence of Spirit power, and an intelligence 
foreign to my own. The law of such communications is sufficiently 
well understood by the majority of those who will feel an interest in 
these pages, and I need only add, for the information of the " unini- 
tiated," that whilst the theory of spirit communion claims the possi- 
bility of the most exalted ideas inflowing upon the organism of a 
medium, through the different conditions of vision, trance, impression, 
psychology, etc., such ideas are invariably shaped in their external ex- 
pression, first, by the cerebral development, and next, by the vocal 
organs of the medium. Much of what is here presented, therefore, is 
original in idea, at least, with an intelligential power beneath whose 
psychological impress my own mind becomes mere wax. The phraseology 
and innumerable irregularities of expression must be received as evi- 
dence of a conflict between the infinite realms of thought and the finite 
chain of imperfect human language ; the soaring eagle flight of a spiritual 
idea, fettered by the narrow, half-conscious prison of an organism whose 
humanity must forbid its participation in conceptions often transcending 
its own sphere of observation. Measure not the ocean of mind, there- 
fore, from which the thoughts pervading these addresses have come, by 
the form of the narrow banks of the human channel in which you find 
them imprisoned. 

The subjects of these Lectures (though presented by me to a Chicago 
audience for the first time) have formed the theme of address in one or 
two other places before — such subjects being deemed by my guides of 
more importance as principles, (the enforcement of which should be 
one main object of my teachings,) than the mere capacity to make a 
speech, no matter what the subject, provided it was "something new." 
For the first two years of my public teaching, I was chiefly exercised 



TO THE READER. 



in the phenomenal part of speech-making, generally submitting the 
subjects to the choice of a committee formed on the spot, or presenting, 
through spirit direction, addresses extemporized on every conceivable 
variety of subjects, the texts of which were very frequently found in 
the events and surroundings of the hour, such as a flower laid on the 
desk, the falling rain, or, still more commonly, a question proposed by 
some stranger in the audience. "The day of phenomena is passing 
away," is the language of one of my Guides, " and if you mediums 
would become the instructors, rather than the wonder of your audiences, 
suffer us to enforce and repeat by ' line upon line, and precept upon 
precept,' such principles as will grow into fundamental truths in the 
people's hearts." At the same time, however hackneyed the subject 
may be to myself or others, I find that its treatment is singularly varied 
in adaptation to the different classes of mind and intelligence that sur- 
round me. " Truths, laws and principles are for all times, and revela- 
tion belongs to eternity. Its expression, however, must be adapted to the 
time, place and person, or it is valueless." This is another sentence 
by which my Guides have intimated their dissent from the frequent 
propositions that have been made to me to publish my Lectures. " We 
think for all time — but speak for the hour." " The thought will not 
perish, but the words, gestures, intonation and present surroundings, 
being specially adapted to the present hour, will serve but as a husk to 
enclose the living grain, rather than as the daily bread which each hour 
demands, if it be written or preserved in stereotyped gospels." Why 
then, it may be asked, do I depart from so wholesome a provision 
against the infliction of " stereotyped gospels," upon a growing people 
whose minds cannot fail to overleap the fetters of stationary books ? 
This is my answer: At the close of these Lectures, I was introduced 
to a gentleman, who, I found, had hired a reporter at his own expense, 
to transcribe them, and conceiving that they would benefit the world in 
the same proportion as he had himself profited, he generously deter- 
mined to hear all the risk and expense of publication, and by presenting 
them in the most attractive form possible, add to the good which he 
supposed their perusal might produce, a surplus fund, which he nobly 
dedicated to the promotion of a great philanthropic undertaking in favor 
of forlorn, outcast, homeless females. The entire unselfishness of this 
'. like a warm ray of Bunlight, completely melted away the ice of 
my philosophical scruples. "Let kindness prevail." 1 cried, "and 
the sun of human love shine on, though it may put out the eye of 



TO THE READER. 



deliberate reason, and overflow the banks of judgment with its genial 
thaw !" And so, reader, for the sake of that unselfish love of humanity 
which defies the check-rein of cold prudence to guide it, you have this 
course of Six Lectures in all their unstudied, uncorrected (for they have 
not even been seen or revised by me in any way) crudity. If you can 
extract the kernel of spiritual thought from the rough husk of unpre- 
meditated human speech, they may do you good, — if you fail, the money 
you bestow upon the unappreciated page will buy one brick in the home 
for the homeless, the shelter for the houseless, whose miserable lot has 
been one of the stimulants to this publication. 

I have been solicited, by the publisher of this work, to add some 
account of my own mediumship and connection with the great spiritual- 
istic movement. Two reasons induce me to comply with this request 
as briefly as may be : the first is, the immense saving of time and 
breath which I am constantly called upon to bestow, for the satisfaction 
of inquirers who have never studied the homely proverb of " mind your 
own business;" and the next is, the saving of all manner of eccentric 
characters which divers persons, highly interested in minding my busi- 
ness, insist upon fastening on me, to the manifest injury of truth, and 
sometimes to my infinite bewilderment as to whether I am myself, 
or the apocryphal personage I sometimes hear spoken of as Emma 
Hardinge. 

In brief, then, I was born in London, England, and up to the age 
of twelve years, was educated in the quiet seclusion of " sweet home." 
The death of a noble father, and the entire disruption of family ties, 
sent me out into the world at this early period of my life, first as a 
teacher of music in a school, and subsequently as a concert player and 
vocalist. I beg, distinctly, once and for all, to claim, that I never went 
to school in my life as a student ; that the common branches of English 
education were received only in the family circle of accomplished 
English ladies, and the life page of good society ; and that in no science 
but the theory of music, and the all-absorbing page of harmony and 
composition, did I ever receive any instruction, or pursue any study. 
From the age of twelve, my public life commenced ; and any one who 
has become acquainted with the severe studies which musical artistes 
are called upon to pur^ in Europe, (especially when in addition I had 
to provide a home for myself and my mother by my teaching, etc.,) 
will scoff at the idea that any leisure could have been afforded me for 
those metaphysical and scientific studies in which certain of my Amer- 



8 TO THE READER. 



ican friends confidently affirm " my youth was absorbed." With 
the exception of a little dabbling in astrology, pursued under the 
auspices of merry gipsying parties, I never heard of, much less studied, 
any " ology " in my life. From six to eight hours' practice of vocal 
and instrumental music each day, and the gay soirees in which musical 
artistes form the chief feature in European aristocratic circles, — thus 
passed my early life, until the complete loss of my singing voice, and 
chronic difficulties with my throat, compelled me to adopt speaking 
instead of singing for a profession, and the drama instead of the opera. 
From this period I remained in one London theatre for seven years, 
and except on rare occasions, never during that period passed more 
than a week at a time exempt from the arduous and all-engrossing 
duties of a London actress' life. To study original parts for a very 
fashionable and aristocratic theatre — to compose the most recherche 
costumes — acquire all the accomplishments which entitle a successful 
London artiste to entree in the best society, — filled up my time to the 
fullest measure ; and yet, from duties which engrossed my companions 
too constantly to allow of the study of anything but the "role" of 
the night, I contrived to steal time to play the organ and piano, and 
give many compositions to the public. Messrs. Bookworms, who see 
only in books and a life of incessant study, the origin of my Lectures, 
this was my life up to the very hour when I set foot on the shores of 
America, in the year 1855. Be so good, all ye who peruse these 
pages, to shape your confident assertions accordingly. I came to 
America, purposing to pass six months, which the horrors of the Crimean 
war, then raging, made very sad and depressing in London, in a 
temporary engagement in New York. The six months extended to 
ten, and during that period, for the first time in my life, I heard of 
Spiritualism. 

The idea of communion with " the dead " appeared, in the outset, 
impossible, then wicked, and nothing but the persuasions of several 
persons by whom I was suirounded, could have induced me to investi- 
gate. Purposing to return to England in a few weeks, however, and 
not unwilling to carry away with me subjects for sport and ridicule, 
(an inhospitable practice, too common among foreigners when visiting 
distant countries,) I determined to witness \^t lhnew (as nil know 
wbo really know nothing about Spiritualism,) was " a grand American 
humbug" Trusting to my shrewdness to detect what I felt mutt be a 
shallow imposture, 1 visited Mr. Conklin, the well-known test 



TO THE READER. 



medium of New York. Before I was introduced into the circle then 
assembled, I heard a sentence spelled out which appeared to me at 
variance with Bible writ. This was enough — after the fashion of 
some of those who attend our spiritual lectures, and with so little con- 
fidence in the truth of their own system, that the moment they hear it 
attacked, they rise up and fly, lest their truth and their religion should 
fly first — I fled, scared off, in fear that my "rock of ages," my 
Bible, should be insulted, and my own unswerving faith be shaken, 
by sitting in such infidel company. It was many weeks before I could 
bring myself to understand that great truths are never in danger, and 
that every blow leveled against a rock, must be made with stronger 
material than the rock, before it can touch it. 

In my second attempt, I was taken to Ada Hoyt, the well-known 
test rapping medium, through whom I first heard the magic raps — on 
table, wall, floor, my own chair, and in every possible direction, where 
machinery, imposture, or any contrivance secreted about the medium's 
person, were impossible — every question, mental as well as oral, was 
satisfactorily answered, and nothing but conviction should have 
followed so convincing a seance, had not unreasoning bigotry and 
prejudice assured me it was impossible, because it was — and, still 
worse, the obstinate raps persisted in calling me " a medium." Weeks 
of patient, earnest investigation followed. In the presence of Mrs. 
Kellogg, of New York, I became developed as a test medium — by 
writing, personating, seeing, hearing, and a variety of phases, I was 
enabled to sit for inquirers, and cheerfully gave my services for more 
than a year to all who desired them. Still I could not wholly yield 
up my belief. I found I had always been a medium. Trance, with 
its unconscious speech, was but another phase of somnambulism, for 
which, from a child, I had been remarkable. Psychometry accounted 
for the fact, that, as a dramatist, I never remember to have felt fully 
studied in any part I had to play, until I had slept on, or at least lain 
down with my head in close proximity with the page I had to study. 
A thousand weird peculiarities of my youth now recalled themselves 
to me in the clear light of spiritual impression — ghosts, presentiments, 
sounds and voices, impulses, and all the vagaries beneath which I was 
branded by the title of " a very strange child," and in later years 
acquired the name of " Elfie," signifying a sprite or fairy — all now 
loomed up in the light of spiritual realities ; a life-long preparation for 
my present position ; but as the experiences of every medium are 



10 TO THE READER. 



shaped by their organization, and adapted specially to their individual- 
ity, so it would be impossible in this brief notice to give the faintest 
idea of the worlds of thought, deed, and revelation that have been 
crowded into my little four years of spiritual experience, nor yet to 
divine it by the experience of another. Suffice it to say, I pursued 
my researches and experiments in every available quarter, high or 
low — in circles in cellars and garrets, saloons and woods — never 
shrinking from the evil, so long as I felt sure of my own integrity, nor 
injured by the false, so long as I was true myself. I have convinced 
myself thoroughly of the truth of psychology and magnetism, by 
repeatedly becoming the subject of the influence, nor are there many 
phases of mediumship, except physical force manifestations, which I 
have not practically experienced, and carefully investigated. For 
many months I devoted myself to this absorbing search — to sitting for 
the public, and being the instrument of Spirits in various ways, without 
the least idea of ever being a " public trance speaker " — always on the 
eve of returning to England, and always fettered down by my unseen 
psychologists to their work. I at last began to wake to the conscious- 
ness that my mother and myself must live on material as well as 
spiritual bread — that my Spirit Guides had forbidden the stage to me — 
that my pupils in music shrank away from the weird reputation of a 
medium — that my contributions to spiritual papers transmuted the gold 
from my pocket to mere laurels for my head, and that all the time, 
health and effort I was bestowing on the world as a medium, was 
merely laying up treasures for to-morrow, without doing the smallest 
thing towards supplying the wants of to-day. 

Then came the word of power — " Emma, you must go out and speak 
to the world." 

I had borne all sorts of deceptions from the Spirits, and found 
them the 'best of lesso?is ; practical tests, both of their strict humanity, 
and the necessity of trying than according to scripture formula. I 
had proved that all the chaff of Spiritualism contained living kernels 
of life ; that all the trials, sufferings and apparent evils in which I was 
often tried in very purgatorial fires, were good for me, abundant in 
use and teaching, and that no dark spirit ever stood on my left hand, 
unaccompanied by a radiant angel in white, on my right. In a word, 
in an experience as sharp and bitter as has ever fallen to the lot of a 
Spirit Medium of these modern days, I would not then, anymore than 
I M<>uld now, part with one single trial, nor can I feel that aught but 



TO THE READER. H 



Divine wisdom and Omniscient power was dealing with me through 
every variety of spiritual intelligence ; but this last charge, to wit, 
that I, a woman, and, moreover, " a lady by birth," and English, 
above all, that 1 would go out, like " strong minded women," and 
hector the world, on public platforms ! oh, shocking ! I vowed rebel- 
lion — to give up Spirits, Spiritualism, and America; return to England, 
and live " a feminine existence" once again. With these magnani- 
mous resolves strong upon me one week, the next saw me on a public 
platform, fairly before the world as a Trance speaker. 

The details of my struggle, and its conquest, are too long for inser- 
tion here ; the whole may be summed up in one sentence ; I am a good 
psychological subject, and the Spirits are good psychologists. They, it 
seems, wanted me, had ground me in the mill of suffering, expressly 
to fit me for this work ; " and what frail bark can stem its way against 
the ocean's tide?" In my first debut as a Spiritual Lecturer, I spoke 
after a manner, which, with modifications growing out of atmospheric, 
physical, and psycical conditions, continues up to the present time. 
For sometime before the commencement of the lecture, but chiefly 
after taking my seat on the platform, I feel the pressure of a dreamy 
magnetic influence, at times deepening into complete abstraction from 
the surrounding scene. I cannot always tell the exact commencement 
of the lecture. The audience, the scene, and my own words appear 
present, as li in a dream within a dream" The effect of human 
psychology upon me is very painful. There is an absolute compulsion 
to perform a certain part, whilst I retain sufficient consciousness to 
appreciate and hopelessly to struggle against the control exercised. In 
these spiritual lectures I can equally clearly recognize the presence of 
psychological control. The unprompted flow of words are not my own. 
Every gesture and movement appears to me, at times, compelled, and 
yet the compulsion is accompanied by a dreamy indifference on my 
part, a perfect absence of care, and sense of safety and protection from 
my precious invisible masters, that renders my servitude an exceed- 
ingly happy one. I can feel rather than see the audience ; and their 
degree of intelligence, but especially the presence of antagonism, is 
painfully distinct. Sometimes a strongly marked individual character 
in the audience becomes prominent to me, occasionally and markedly 
influencing the lecture, sometimes presenting singular points of char- 
acter, the contemplation of which will absorb my attention whilst the 
lecture proceeds. The details of my addresses I can only realize very 



12 TO THE READER. 



imperfectly at the time, my own state being too dreamy for acute per- 
ception. Hours of subsequent quiet communion with the Spirit world 
are essential to the realization of personal benefit from the teachings 
given. 

* For the names of those beneath whose ministry I am happy in the 
belief of acting, although frequently questioned, I feel no prompting 
to state them. I have good reason for my belief in their identity, but 
those reasons are only influential with myself and a few others. To 
the world I can offer no direct testimony on this point, and am instruct- 
ed to present whatever truths my lips can utter, for the truth's sake 
alone. " A great name cannot sanctify an error, nor add to the lustre 
of a truth," say my Guides; "be it the mission of wise Spirits to sub- 
stitute for the authority of a name, the omniscience of truth only." 
Besides the kind and powerful band who seem to throng around me in 
my public mission, I am constantly surrounded by a few Spirit friends, 
one of whom, after the fashion of the reputed "familiar," appears a 
duplicate of my very self, conversing with me with all the facility of 
human speech, at all times, places and situations, advising and war- 
ing me of the future, peering into the unveiled natures of almost every 
one who approaches me, cheering me in that which to the world would 
be loneliness, but which is to me the most precious companionship, and 
by a thousand little tests separating his intelligence from my own, and 
ten thousand little acts of care, foresight and tenderness, justifying my 
grateful cry, "Oh, Spirit, thy love puts this cold world to shame." 

Thus far, then, I have brought up my notice (if I may so phrase it,) 
of my public career to the present hour. The details would compre- 
hend a very large volume, for " we live in heart throbs, not in figures 
on the dial." In the four years of my spiritual experience, therefore, 
I have lived a very long life ; traveled through most of the States of 
this vast America, often going many thousand miles in a few months. 
In all my journeyings, East, West, North, and South, I have always 
gone by the direction of the Spirits, and though my engagements are 
generally made twelve months in advance, I never, save once, (and that 
in verification of a prediction,) have broken any ; never encountered 
accident, or insult; enjoyed health and strength unprecedented in 
my former life ; and with the exception of one generous, unselfish 
human friend, and that a rival lecturer to boot, — Mrs. E. J. French, oi 
N«'\v Fork, — I stalled on my public career without a human hand to 
aid, or B human brain to counsel me. 



TO THE READER. 13 



The predictions of my true-hearted friend, Mrs. French, and the 
assurance of the Spirits, that " without editor to puff, or friend to 
recommend ; without a place to go to ; a stranger, and utterly unknow- 
ing and unknown in the country, I should visit every State, find a 
home in every city, success everywhere, and all through the power of 
the Spirits," — all this and more, much more than I could have dared 
to ask or hope for, has been showered upon me. Truly I may say, 
though country, home and kindred are left behind, and though fortune 
and fame have never yet entered into my calculations, or influenced a 
single step I have ever taken in Spiritualism, yet in disregarding 
these, I have sold all in exchange for the pearl of price that is worth 
more to me than all the world beside. 

EMMA HAKDINGE. 

Chicago, Illinois, November, 1860. 



LECTURE FIRST 



ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 



Delivered at Kingsbury Hall, Sunday Morning, Oct. 21, 



[ Miss Hardinge appeared on the platform, and commenced speaking to a crowded house, 
at fifteen minutes before eleven o'clock. She spoke as follows:] 

"And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, 
the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." 

This is essentially a thinking age — the age of thought 
throughout the universe. The various changes that are every- 
where pervading the race, are at the instigation of thought, 
— that thought which demands liberty. The aim of the 
people is for liberty. In every corner of the known earth, 
at this day, at this very hour, the cry is for liberty. The 
blow that is struck, and the plot that is hatched, are for 
liberty — liberty for the body, liberty for the soul. It is not 
alone the masses — no more the masses, but now the individ- 
uals, are craving their rights, are struggling for liberty. 
The cry has gone forth, for that thought stimulates every 
brain and every heart to be free. Hence, from before every 
pulpit, around the desk of every writer, the cry comes forth 
for liberty for the soul. 

.Therefore it is that we propose this day to consider who 
and what is the antagonist against which the fighting soul is 
bringing her forces in the attempts for liberty. Wherever 
we find a chain bound to the human soul, that chain is drawn 
and forged by the hand of mystery. Wherever the will of 
Heaven, the knowledge of the Creator and the knowledge 
of human destiny are darkened from human souls, it is by 



16 ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

the power of mystery. Nothing but mystery stands between 
the Creator and the creature ; nothing but mystery enclouds 
the knowledge of human destiny. There are some of ye, 
too, who may claim that the present is enough — that to live 
by virtue, to act out your pious part is sufficient for this hour 
— that whatever may be your destiny in the future, there is a 
system of religion which will provide for it. 

These dogmas, these forms, these institutions termed reli- 
gions, have been established from the beginning of the world. 
Men, wise and instructed in the various systems of religion, 
have been appointed to preside over and take charge of these 
things. The present is enough for ye. If your priests could 
die for ye, if your religious teachers could live for ye in the 
hereafter, religious systems would be enough for ye. 

But there is a revolution which m this nineteenth century 
has passed over the earth like a flood ; this revolution is 
termed modern Spiritualism. By the disclosures it makes, 
you are informed, out of the lips you have known, loved, 
trusted, recognized, and now understand to be the dearest 
and nearest to your own human souls. By this means, you 
comprehend that your life does not ever begin here ; that 
you are in but a rudimental state ; that here the seed is only 
sown in the darkness of the ground ; that you are not abso- 
lutely born until the great change called death has liberated 
your life, and given your spirit the first moment of its real 
existence ; that there commences your being ; that whatever 
you have thought, done, said, or acted during the seven days 
of the week constitutes the heaven or the hell, the real 
tangible locality in which you commence your spirit life. 

If this be true, stand ye this day the arbiter between your 
religions and modern Spiritualism, and judge which ye shall 
take. It is for the purpose of endeavoring to build a great 
present church of reality that spirits come ; it is for the pur- 
pose of bringing you a living, tangible religion; of rending 
the vail of mystery, and at least giving you a chance that you 
shall not take your lea]) in the dark — that you shall not go, 
you know not whither — that you shall not ruin the spirit that 



ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 17 

God has planted in the world of matter, that spirits are now 
in your midst. For ten years they have presented to you 
proofs of the living reality of the spirit land. 

The antagonist power to these views have been the sys- 
tems of mystery, known as religion. Wherever the father 
whom you trusted, the mother whom you loved, the friend, 
the statesman, the philanthropist, the mighty and the wise 
of all past ages, speak to you of an existence antagonistic to 
your present system of teaching, up rises the tremendous 
Babylon of Mystery, darkening out the real tangible life of 
God's own facts, and presenting to you the solemn mysteries, 
veiled behind which your soul must be shrouded, and against 
which your life may be wrecked. Spirits at least find, that 
to build the great church of the future, to uprear the house 
and admit the sunlight into that mansion through whose glo- 
rious illuminated windows every human soul may read its 
destiny, the great Babylon of mystery must be opened up 
unto ye. Ye shall know that which ye assert. Oh, Israel ! 
ye shall comprehend the gods before whom ye bow down and 
worship. 

It is the purpose of the power, whatever it be, that is now 
permitted to address you through these lips, to offer some 
fragment of spiritual knowledge, which it is the mission of 
immortals to bring. Ere we do so, we invite you this morn- 
ing to take the initiatory step, and contemplate the great 
veil of mystery, and see whence it came ; then shall ye choose 
before what God ye will bow down. We make this prologue 
ere we open up the great drama of religious priestcraft, 
because we desire that none should fear that truth is in dan- 
ger, or that they may hear words that will fall harshly upon 
their hearts, for the truth is safe. Bless the lips that dig up 
the mystery which surrounds it, and bring it to the light, 
for truth can bear the light. Therefore we ask, with him of 
old, " What is the truth ? " It is with a view of placing 
truth upon a rock — of disclosing the great foundations which 
the Almighty Architect has laid, to write thereon the text ot 

2 



18 ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

his gospel, that we design, this da}', to open up this veil of 
mystery before you. 

What are religious systems? Whence do they come? 
We invite ye to go back to the first hours, when man stereo- 
typed his opinions from the records on high ; and thus shall 
we find the origin of all present systems. Geology, astrono- 
my, physiology and natural history, are all exact sciences, as 
far as ye have gone in their investigation. They are founded 
upon demonstrable facts. By these ye learn that the world 
is very old ; that not thousands, but millions of years have 
swept over the ages since first the foundations of this planet 
were laid. All the remains of man's history, point to the 
East as the cradle of civilization — point to the East as the 
land where systems of religion first prevailed. We dig back 
amongst the monumental remains ; we examine the hiero- 
glyphics which no time can sweep away ; we pore over the 
Sacred Books of other languages ; we stand upon the very 
threshold of time itself, and there we find that the very first, 
the earliest systems that ever prevailed upon earth, were the 
worship of the powers of nature. We find that the ancients 
had but two sciences — the knowledge of agriculture and of 
astronomy. The knowledge of agriculture was the result of 
the necessities of the body. Man must live. The earth, the 
tree, the plant, the fruit — these were his means of subsist- 
ence. To cultivate these he must observe times and seasons. 
The ancients soon began to perceive that the wondrous majestic 
sun was the source of that light and heat and warmth which 
produces fertility. They also observed that there came a 
period of time when this magnificent king-god, this great power 
of warmth and heat and plenty, almost disappeared, when his 
beams grew cold and feeble, when darkness settled over the 
face of the earth, when gloom, and wind, and storm, and tem- 
pest prevailed. Then they perceived that there was another 
renovation of the power of the great sun-god ; and by observ- 
ing those alternate periods, they first began to fashion their 
time into what we have since termed years. They divided up 
this year into four seasons. They then observed that the sun, 



ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 19 

duriDg a certain period, was radiant and mighty, then he dis- 
appeared. They called this night and day. They next ob- 
served that there were secondary orbits and secondary lumi- 
naries — the gracious stars, the fiery scriptures of the skies, 
on which you read the immensity of your God's works. Cer- 
tain groups of these fiery worlds, they observed, ever ap- 
peared in certain shapes at different periods of the year. 
They called these constellations. They remarked that the 
sun constantly passed through these groups of stars at dif- 
ferent and regularly recurring periods. They conceived 
therefore, that these stars must partake of the same influ- 
ences which the sun itself exerted. They soon began to 
divide their year into winter and summer. They called the 
period when the sun passed through the constellations of 
summer, the hour of good ; they called that of winter, the 
hour of evil. 

They also perceived that man was weak ; that the forces 
of nature were strong ; that the mighty winds, and boiling 
tempests, and raging floods, and the billowy ocean, were 
strong ; the powerful sun, and the radiant day — all these they 
perceived were beyond their control. They found themselves 
possessed of a life they had not created, surrounded by pow- 
ers they could not control, and enveloped in a wondrous veil 
of mystery. They soon perceived that there was order, de- 
sign and calculation, power, benificence and principle every- 
where ; or what ye now term laws. They observed that 
nothing but mind could frame laws — nothing but that tri- 
umphant and unseen power within them, which they called 
soul, could create, could alter, destroy or reproduce ; and 
they said, " Somewhere there is a mighty soul ; somewhere 
there is a great mind that has created all these things, that 
rules, sustains and preserves us. May not this power dwell 
in the great fiery luminary that we call the cause of good ? 
and may not these beautiful worlds that shine night after 
night above us, that influence our tides and our vegetation, 
and that group around the great master mind, God — may not 
these be the habitation of those spirits whose power we feel 



20 ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

though we cannot see them ? May not light and heat and 
vegetation dwell there ? May not the great gods that have 
ruled and governed and fashioned this wonderful earth, be 
resident in those powerful planets ? " And so they termed 
the stars of summer the signs of the good spirits. The stars 
of winter, they named the evil ones. They called the sum- 
mer constellations by glorious names, and the winter constel- 
lations by those names that expressed aversion and dread. 

Some of these constellations we shall now refer to. They 
divided them into twelve signs or divisions ; you now pre- 
serve these twelve signs, and call them your Zodiac. These 
signs of the year the ancients called by a sacred name. They 
set apart certain men from their midst — men of religion, men 
of philosophy, and of science. They called these men over- 
seers. They built them high towers, and required them to 
govern and keep watch upon the luminaries of the sky, and 
give them notice when to reap and when to sow, when the 
tides of the Nile and the Ganges would rise ; in a word, 
these men were entrusted with a knowledge of all the 
sciences which the simple ancients in their first ignorant con- 
dition could conceive. At first, these men were faithful to 
their trusts. They reported the times and seasons. They 
were called by a name, which in later times, amongst Greeks, 
has been converted into Episcopacy or Episcopalians, signi- 
fying oversee-ers. At first, we say, they were faithful to their 
trusts. They named the constellation of spring, The Plow, 
because that was the season to plow the earth. They named 
another glorious constellation The Lamb, because that was the 
period when these young and innocent beings gave token of 
a fruitful summer. They named another The Lion, because it 
was the period of the raging heat of the royal sun. They 
named the constellation of autumn — the great and mighty 
constellation that threatened the approach of dark and tcr- 
rible winter, The Great Dragon ; they called him The Serpent, 
first, from their hatred of that poisonous creature, and next, 
because the concentric rings of this mighty constellation 
represented the serpent. As the sun passed through these 



ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 21 

various constellations, the ancients held their great feasts. 
In the spring time thej said, " The glorious sun is now in the 
sign of the Lamb ;" we will adore the Lamb. In the summer 
they rejoiced and called it the royal period of good ; and now 
you freemasons have instituted a Royal St. John's, or midsum- 
mer day. Later in the year, they beheld the sun pass through 
the dreadful sign of the destroyer, and they cried, " Our God 
is now conflicting with the evil angels. There is war in 
heaven. Woe ! woe ! for the world. The destroyer is at 
hand." During the gloomy period of winter, they named 
the constellations by many dreadful titles. At last came the 
period when the sun passed through a constellation resem- 
bling, as the ancients pictorially and typically expressed it, a 
woman standing alone in the heavens. This was about the 
twenty-fifth day of December. They said, " Our Sun-God is 
now passing through the sign of the Virgin. Our sun is 
born again. Glory to the Highest ! Rejoice, ye nations, our 
sun has passed through the sign of the Virgin, and is born 
again." Thus, you cannot mention a single religion on earth 
that has not held this period as the most sacred of the whole 
year, from that time. The sign of the Lamb, and the various 
others which we have mentioned, began to typify the pas- 
sage of the sun through these various constellations. 

This was the first system of religion upon this continent, 
whose mounds in the land of Mexico, are strange, fantastic 
signs, and mysterious relics of an old and almost forgotten 
system ; in Arabia, in the island kingdoms of the East, in 
the Druidical remains that survive in Lapland, Norway, 
Sweden, Denmark — in all parts of the known earth, are the 
vestiges of this astronomical religion. It was the first reli- 
gion ; it was the only religion that prevailed when the world 
was young. In later times, it has been termed " Sabaism," 
or the worship of the Sabeans, or fire-worship. You take 
exception to the word " fire-worship." The ancients never 
worshiped sun, or moon, or stars. That is left for modern 
nations. That is left for the idolatrous nineteenth century. 
That is left for those who build tall steeples, in imitation of 



22 ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

the pointed flames of the ancients. In those days of inno- 
cence and ignorance, the ancients simply knew that there 
was a power outside of themselves, which they termed by a 
word which ye translate into God. They simply knew that 
there was a power that caused plenty, and one that caused 
famine. They likened these to good and evil among them- 
selves ; and hence they expressed the alternations of good and 
evil by the passage of the sun through these constellations. 

As the world grew older, priests grew many. The over- 
seers that were set upon the towers, or what has been called, 
in later times, the walls of ancient science, grew very strong 
and powerful. By means of their sciences, they were 
enabled to calculate eclipses, to predict tempests and changes 
of the weather. They also possessed the power of healing. 
On all the ancient monuments ye perceive evidences that they 
were magnetizers. The diseases were attributed to demons, 
who were supposed to possess persons. These awful powers 
were supposed to be left loose to torment and torture human- 
ity, and these priests were believed to be invested with the 
power to dispossess or drive out these demons. They very 
soon, therefore, began to appear to the eyes of the people in 
some supernatural and tremendous point of view. They 
could read the stars, and commune with spirits. They knew 
the designs of the great and awful Creator ; they possessed 
his awful secrets ; they were enabled to perform signs and 
wonders. Thus, the people, in order to propitiate them, 
brought them large presents and enormous sacrifices. "When 
storm, and tempest, and famine came, these men told them 
their God was angry, and urged them to part with their 
wealth. They did part with it ; and the tenth part of every- 
thing was reserved for the priests. But at last the priests 
began to find that they were growing up into a strong and 
mighty body — that the rule of the earth was committed to 
their charge. They were no more than the servants of the 
people at first, but they became their rulers, and they said, 
" Lest the people should become as wise as ourselves, lest 
they should be like us, and cat of the tree of life, we will 



ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 23 

drive them out of the garden of Eden ; we will keep them in 
ignorance ; we will make them tillers of the ground." So 
they invented the magnificent system of mystery. 

Ye find also, that when first men stereotyped their thoughts 
in enduring form, as a record for after ages, it was done by 
symbols. The ancients had no hieroglyphic writing. That, 
was a modern invention, compared with the ancient system of 
symbol writing. All the old monuments bear witness to this. 
Every day, the sciences and investigations of men are disen- 
tombing and bringing to light the fingers with which man first 
wrote, and the means by which man first preserved the 
record of his own history. In the midst of all these remains 
you find that there was a system of symbol writing, some 
of which we shall now present to you. 

The ancients represented innocence, in their typical lan- 
guage, as a garden, or rather, they called it the garden of 
innocence. The garden was the first state of earth ; the 
garden was the condition of innocent ignorance, in which the 
people were anxious for the knowledge of good and evil. 
The tree, with its fruit, was ever the symbol of knowledge ; 
the serpent, as we have stated, was ever the symbol of temp- 
tation and sin. Woman, with her quick intuition and eager 
spirit of inquiry, was always represented as the tempter. 

The nations began to inquire, " Why are we sorrowful ? 
and why are we unhappy ? alas !" they said, " it is the temp- 
tation of the dark and fatal spirits of winter. Why are these 
antagonistic ?" They could not admit that their God was 
not all-powerful. Therefore, they must represent that a 
secondary principle was the author of evil. They said their 
God was good ; their mighty Sun-God was all goodness. 
Nevertheless there was an antagonistic principle. They said 
there was a tempter. They said, " the angels fell from their 
first estate ; they were once like our Sun-God, good, and our 
God ever conflicts with them, and eventually will overcome 
them by the power of summer. They said there was the same 
conflict in the human mind, between the powers of good and 
evil. Hence, they represented this by what, in modern times, 



2-i ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

ye term the " fall of man." This was nothing more than a 
fable, which the ancients desired to render typical of the con- 
flict between good and evil in man. They said, " when man 
ceased to be ignorant, and therefore innocent — when he ate 
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — when he could 
discriminate between good and evil, then did he become 
responsible for sin." You will find that the story of the 
Garden of Eden, the tale of Paradise, and the expulsion of its 
first inhabitants, instead of being first written by Moses, was 
written some four thousand years before Moses lived. Monu- 
ments that are now standing, great stones, piled in mighty 
and enduring grandeur, solemn temples, bear a record which 
time cannot efface, which all your theology cannot demolish. 
They uprear their great black fingers and point to this enor- 
mous, indestructible fact. The garden of Eden, with all its 
symbolical significance, was not the revelation of the Lord to 
Moses, but the simple idea of the ancients, signifying the 
origin of man, who has come up from a state of ignorance to 
a state of knowledge, and consequently to the temptation, 
which the knowledge of good and evil offered to him. 

And this was the origin of one idea — that of the knowledge 
and the conflict of good and evil. You behold it night after 
night, when you gaze upon God's eternal scriptures, written 
with his own fingers of light, and stereotyped in characters 
as immutable as the changeless One himself. There is not a 
form of religion, not a system, call we it Christianity, or by 
any other name, but what was born of the astronomical sys- 
tems of the ancients. 

Permit us to trace them a little farther. We find that the 
superb dynasties of India and Egypt enlarged upon the astro- 
nomical systems of the ancients. They, too, had their powers 
of good and evil. They had precisely the same priests — pre- 
cisely the same fasts. We trace, then, a little later down in 
the histories and mysteries of the Egyptian and other nations. 

The Brahmins were a powerful order of priests, who ever 
kept the people in ignorance and. subjection. All their forma 
and ceremonies were solemn mysteries. The people stood 



ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 25 

without the veil, and were unable, or rather, were not per- 
mitted to comprehend the simplest thing, unless through the 
interpretation of the priests. " Our God is a mystery," they 
said, " you must not inquire into the mysteries that belong to 
him." Later down we find that the Egyptians instituted the 
most solemn of mysteries. Permit us to give you evidence 
of some of these far-famed mysteries. And remember, for 
whatever we present to you, we offer no spiritual authority ; 
no " Thus saith the Lord" addresses you this day. We come 
before the books of the universe. We may drink from the 
fountains of all knowledge. Do you understand their import 
and their truth ? The books are open for you to drink of 
them. In any case, we stand ready to prove the truth of any 
statement made this day. 

We find that one of the most solemn mysteries of the 
Egyptians, was that of Osiris, the Sun-God of every other 
nation. They said this was the principle of good. They 
also claimed that there was a destroying power called Typhon. 
With him Osiris constantly conflicted. Osiris was not the 
great Creator, but simply the son of God, or the Incarnation, 
— for, be it remembered, every nation had its incarnate gods. 
The Indians had theirs ; the Persians had theirs ; the Egyp- 
tians had theirs ; the Greeks and Romans theirs ; and, unfor- 
tunately for some systems, these incarnations lived to write 
their history and stereotype their Scriptures, ages before the 
Jews ever lived as a nation. They are represented in the 
tale of the Hindoo Vishnu and his nine avatars. They are 
found in the story of Osiris. They said, when the earth was 
full of famine and pestilence, when storm and desolation were 
rife, the beneficent Jupiter sent his mighty son, the Great 
Osiris, down to earth. He was the last and best of all the 
incarnations that ever appeared.' He ran his race among 
men ; gave them glorious laws, wise and beneficent institu- 
tions ; bade them beware of priests and their systems ; talked 
as never man talked before. But at last he was conquered 
by the power of Typhon, the Destroyer. Then the earth was 
in mourning. Then, for three long days, Isis, the mother 



26 ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

mourned her Sun-God lost. At last she found him on the 
twenty-fifth day of December. He appeared once more in 
the heavens, in all the solemn glory of resurrected life. This 
was the great mystery of Isis and Osiris. In celebrating 
these mysteries, the priests required immense wealth. The 
people must bring of all their treasures ; a share of all their 
splendor and wealth must be laid at the feet of the priests, 
and woe betide those who denied to these mediators between 
the Creator and the creature, of their wealth and substance. 
That the people might not be acquainted with these things, 
which were nothing more nor less than types of the passage 
of the sun or soul through the various conflicting periods of 
good and evil, the priests invented these mysteries. They 
taught to adore the stars, and fire, and trees, and the powers 
of nature ; but they kept to themselves the fact that the 
powers of nature were subordinate to one mighty God. They 
formed these mysteries, therefore, for their own especial 
benefit. One of the most solemn of their sacraments was 
that of sacrifice. They taught them that every sin must have 
its penalty. They were the first observers of nature. They 
founded their religion in nature, although they taught all the 
people to depart from it. They observed that everything in 
nature produced its unalterable conflict. They said, " Oh 
people, you are sinners ; you must pay a penalty, and if you 
pay the penalty to the priests, you may escape it yourselves. " 
By sacrifice, they meant that the penalty should be paid in 
something else than suffering. Hitherto, the people had 
thought that if they did wrong, the consequent suffering must 
fall upon themselves ; but the priests, by an ingenious system 
of sacrifices, offered the people immunity for sins. AVe tell 
you no fiction. You will not find a single religion on the earth 
but what claims that sacrifices are a means of atonement for 
sins ; not one in which sacrifices are not the means by which 
the power and splendor of the priests and their government 
over the people arc chiefly sustained. 

Another great sacrament was the last and most famous 
mystery of l^is and Osiris, since adopted by the Greeks and 



ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 27 

the Romans, called the Eleusinian Mysteries. This was the 
dark and awful worship paid to the powers of nature. They 
claimed that the earth was represented by Ceres. They 
claimed that the sacrifice of the Sun-God must be given in win- 
ter, that the people might have the glorious light of the resur- 
rected god of summer. They must bring wine, which they 
said was born of the glorious, beneficent sun-light. They 
called this the power of the risen god of day, and they drank 
the wine in honor of his memory. This was the last of the 
famous mysteries of Osiris. They said, " Those who partake 
of this sacrament are made whole, as our Sun-God, our Osiris, 
our Dionysius, has died for you. As the great sacrifice is 
paid, drink of this and you are free from sin." Friends, we 
desire to make no modern application ; we only tell you of 
the solemn customs and systems of the ancients. 

The next nations that arose in order, were the Greeks and / 

Romans, and the last, the Jews. With the institution of 
Judaism, we find that Moses, who was learned in all the wis- 
dom of the Egyptians and their systems of priestcraft — Moses, 
the wise, the inspired, the noble, the beneficent law-giver of 
Israel, desired to liberate the people ; he sought to eman- 
cipate them from the tremendous systems of mystery in which 
they had hitherto been bound down. He cried out to the 
people, and he said to others, " Run and prophesy !" Would 
God that all God's people were priests. His noble aim was 
to make every man his own priest. He sought to break down 
the veil of mystery, and once more restore the knowledge of 
God through nature. He strove to unlock and disentangle 
all the various systems which priests had dragged around the 
people. Unhappily, priestcraft was too remunerative, too 
lucrative for even Moses to destroy it. The sons and daugh- 
ters of Aaron and Moses, and the various Levites who followed 
in his track, were not disposed to relinquish the powers which, 
for untold ages, the priests of the earth had exercised over 
men. But we would have ye remark one point in Jewish 
history : the priests stand on one side, and the prophets on 
the other. Not from the lips of the sublime Isaiah, not from 



/ 



28 ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

Jeremiah, not from Joel, nor Micah, nor any of the prophets, 
do you find mystery. The worship of the one true God ; the 
knowledge of good and evil ; the teaching that, if you eat 
the sour grapes, your own teeth shall be set on edge — this 
you find in the first chapter of Isaiah — that He asks no burnt 
offerings ; that your new moons and your Sabbaths are an 
abomination unto me ; He asks that your hands may be washed 
white, pure and undefiled ; He asks only for the broken heart 
and the contrite spirit ; the spirit shall be before the flesh ; 
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and upon your 
servants and handmaids — upon the basest and lowest of the 
lost nations of earth, the spirit of the one living God shall 
be poured out pure and undefiled. 

There stand in mighty array these solemn old prophets, with 
sublime utterance, calling on the people to offer up no more 
impure physical substances, no more vain oblations — spelling 
out the future and proclaiming it to the people, and calling 
for justice to Babylon, the mother of harlots and abomina- 
tions in the world ; there they stand, the prophets in long array 
on the one side, and the white-robed priests on the other side ; 
the priests darkening the minds of the people with their fasts 
and sacrifices, their phylacteries and their long prayers and 
loud aniens, their greeting in the market-place, their syna- 
gogues, their times and their seasons, their new moons and 
their Sabbaths. Can you reconcile the simple and sublime 
teaching of these ancient prophets, with their unshod feet, 
and wild hair streaming in the winds, their coarse garments, 
and their fearless voices, making a temple of every hill-top 
and every wall, of every highway and byway, with the solemn 
pomp of the priest who, in stately ceremony, waits upon the 
Lord, in temples made with hands, and who claims that a 
sacred mystery enwraps his dogmas and runs down in the 
anointed oil which was poured upon bodies of wood and stone. 

Another great assistance to priestcraft and mystery was 
found in their manner of teaching the words of the poor and 
simple One of Nazareth. No mysteries were in his teach- 
ings ; but one law and one commandment ; how then dare ye 






ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 29 

make Thirty-Nine Articles out of it ? But one system and 
practice. How dare ye make three thousand and more sects 
of Christianity ? But one great church — the church of the 
Universe. How dare ye claim that salvation belongs to your 
temple, which ye framed with human hands, and is not to be 
found outside of it ? But one God, and he your God and 
Father. Oh human fathers ! listen to the cry of that little 
babe, [alluding to the cry of a child in the audience,] listen 
to that little child's tongue ; that sound which now breaks 
upon your ears is the song of Paradise to some mother's heart. 
There is not, in the long array of all past ages, any sound 
that falls upon the ear of the mother of that lisping child so 
precious, so sweet, as that little prattling tongue. Ask her 
whether she could see that simple child — that little waxen, 
tender form, that now clings to her with such love, cast into 
broiling flames and leaping fire, whilst she herself reposed 
in the glory of a power and splendor even divine ; ask her 
what sacrifice she would not make to shelter that precious 
child from suffering ; ask her what moment of day or night 
she grudges wearisome toil and patient waiting upon that 
little being ; ask her if she would not go hungry and cold, 
houseless and wandering, that that child might be cared for. 
And if such is the love of the human mother, do you pretend to 
say you are better than your God ? Aye, do you not in your 
own hearts quail as you would take vengeance upon an enemy 
when you have him helpless at your feet ? Because your 
human heart will not allow you to take vengeance on him, do 
you not let the sinner go free, and cry,' " vengeance is mine, 
saith the Lord " ? That which you are ashamed or afraid to 
do, you believe your God — your heavenly Father — will do ! 
You are better than your religion ; you are not better than 
your God. Go back and repeat the aim and teachings of 
Him whom you call the founder of your religion. He taught 
noble truths ; He taught a religion of love — " love one an- 
other." Contemplate no religion, no worship, but that worship 
which the child offers when he cries " Our Father who art in 
heaven." In those words was a mighty blow given to priest- 



30 ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

craft ; that is the great lesson of the Divine Teacher ; that is 
the Bible ; that is the Gospel realized ; that is the church — 
the great church of humanity ; that is the altar of the pure 
and undefiled human heart. 

Again, we find that when Christ and Moses, Osiris and 
Buddha, and Zoroaster, and all the other teachers of ancient 
times, came and broke the chains of priestcraft, the priests 
at once began to forge them stronger. After the days of 
Jesus of Nazareth, within three hundred and twenty-five- 
years from the time he suffered on the dreadful cross, to prove 
to man the solemn fact that there was but one God, one Father, 
one commandment, more than three hundred priests gathered 
together to settle what men should believe and what they 
should say in order to be saved ; and then came forth their 
Thirty-Nine Articles ; then came forth their creeds and 
systems ; until, at this day of the Lord, in the nineteenth 
century, there have been more than three thousand two hun- 
dred and twenty-nine sects of Christianity, all claiming, not 
to interpret the one law and the one commandment of what 
wc shall do, but all claiming to give new laws and new com- 
mandments of what we shall say — not one of which Jesus of 
Nazareth ever taught, or commanded to be ^aught. 

Oh Mystery ! thou art indeed the mother of the abomina- 
tions of the earth. So it comes to pass, at this day, that 
when man oppresses his fellow man, when the strong hand 
holds the feeble in captivity, and the world asks of him the 
reason, he says he is strong, and the Lord has made him so, 
and his victim is weak, and the Lord has made him so. 
When you ask if the Father of the race is a partial God, 
they reply to you, " It is a great mystery, and you must 
not inquire into things that belong to God." And so it 
comes to pass, that when a bad man closes a bad life, and 
says a few solemn words, and confesses bad mathematics — 
that three are one, and one is three — lo ! the man goes 
Btraight to heaven. And when the poor, toiling sons of 
earth cannot believe in bad mathematics, and ask why these 
things are, the priests solemnly tell them, " It is a 
mystery; it is of the unseen things that belong to God." 



ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 31 

And when brave and noble-minded men, determining that the 
people shall know for themselves, endeavor to invent a system 
by which these words, and any words, the knowledge, reli- 
gion, science, and learning of all ages, can become the 
property of all men — when they put God's wood, and stone, 
and iron, and brass together, and by virtue of God's thoughts 
invented the printing press, these champions of crime and 
mystery cry out, " It is the work of the Evil One." And 
when men ask, " Can the Evil One bring forth the fruits of 
light and knowledge ?" the priests reply, " These things are 
a mystery." So with every invention ; so with every step 
science has taken. With all the efforts of man, inspired by 
his Maker to spell out the Scriptures of his works, uprise the 
priests of mystery and say, " Let there be light, says God ; 
let there be no light, says man." 

Oh mystery ! can there be truth and mystery together ? Is 
it a possibility that God's works, if he be our Father, shall 
be a mystery to us, his children ? Men and spirits, mortals 
and immortals, alike are claimed to be his work — to partake 
of his nature. All are from him, and share in the attributes 
of his nature ; and yet ye claim that a Father draws the veil 
of mystery between himself and his children ! Sects and 
creeds, dogmas and systems, whence do you come ? From 
the astronomical religion of the ancients. Sacrifices came with 
a necessity of worldly men to draw wealth from the people. 
Long fasts, solemn, pompous garments, wide surplices, 
invented by Isis to designate her priests ; bells and candles, 
and every external form that remains to typify that God who 
cannot be symbolized — that God who is outside of and above 
all form — that Almighty, Everlasting Presence that pervades 
all things, and cannot be limited down to one particle ; all 
these things are but Paganism — the fruit of the abominations 
of Babylon the Great. 

It is our privilege, as our parting words, to re-echo the cry 
of the ancient of days : " Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is 
fallen." He who cried " Let there be light," and there was 
light, speaks to-day, as he spoke millions of ages in the past, 



v 



32 ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

and will, according to the capacity of the eye of humanity to 
receive the light, ever speak to the people. A great light 
has dawned on the gross darkness of this age. That light is 
rising. Is it necessary to be a fool, to believe in a religion ? 
Is it necessary to be wholly ignorant — to darken and exclude 
all science — to throw out the demonstrations of God's works, 
before you can receive the testimony of what man calls the 
Word ? And yet ye must be this if God's works and God's 
Word stand in antagonism. There they are — the mighty 
sun, the seasons, the tempests, the great storms of the ocean, 
and on the broad bosom of the lakes ; there they are — the 
noble forest cathedrals, the splendid monumental ruins, the 
wildly beautiful fires of the skies ; there -they are, night after 
night, those hosts of shining worlds, like the troops of God's 
great army, the fiery squadrons of his troops, marching up 
to their places in heaven's wide field, unalterable, yesterday, 
to-day, and forever. Oh, go to these ; search these scrip- 
tures of the universe, written before these scriptures in your 
hand were written. That book was not written when he who 
spake these words told you to search the scriptures. It is 
the scriptures of God's own gospel you must search. There 
is the knowledge of life, which will end the reign of mystery ; 
for mystery is nothing more than an attempt on the part of 
some man who knows more than yourselves, to keep you in 
ignorance. There is no mystery, save your own ignorance, 
and your submission or tyranny one to another. All the 
wonders of the Almighty's gospel have unrolled themselves 
in the light of knowledge, or are now becoming manifest to 
the investigating spirit of man. Fire, water, air, the myste- 
rious atmosphere, the powers, the elements and forces of 
nature, have each yielded up their secrets to the subtle and 
resistless grasp of man. But the last great veil of mystery is 
breaking fast. The great seventh seal, that so long has hid- 
den the word of God, is being broken, and the destiny of 
man, the knowledge of God being revealed : the veil is rent 
in twain. Christ, one day, rent the veil of earthly infirmity 
from the obscured eyes of the faithful few who crowded 



ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 33 

around him, and they recognized him, and knew that those 
who had seen the God-man — the son of God — had seen God 
the Father. He rent the veil of mystery when, on the Mount 
of Transfiguration, he disclosed the fact that the Almighty 
was the God of the living, not the God of the dead ; that the 
living are to be his ministering spirits ; that they can and do 
come to earth ; that these are the ministers of light and 
knowledge, who, in all ages of the world, have gone forth to 
minister to the heirs of salvation. He rent the veil of mys- 
tery when he told you that these heirs of salvation were the 
good and the evil, the just and the unjust; — that even 
though the worst of prodigals, when men rejected him, there 
was a father to whom he could say : " I will arise and go to 
my father, though man rejects me ; in his dear arms shall I 
find refuge." 

Man has drawn the limit of the faith of the soul closer ; he 
has cramped it in the form of an authority, which, in the 
words u Thus saith the Lord," have bound the people down 
beneath the weight and darkness of mystery. Again we pro- 
claim, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is fallen. The trumpet 
notes sounded by the angel of prophetic vision, have gone 
forth once again ; the nations are free ; the awakened 
spirit of man arises in its original dignity and energy ; the 
universe is opening to our view ; the spirit of God is coming 
down among men, and the spirit of man is ascending to the 
knowledge of heavenly things. 

We do not, at this time, propose to answer any questions. 
We leave your thought to revolve the statements we have 
made, this night holding ourself prepared to answer any 
inquiries. To-night we propose to speak of the gospel of 
nature. As we have shown you the past, we design to open 
another view of the true and sacred religion of the earth. 
And who is there that it does not concern ? That lisping 
child is now a spirit incarnate in the flesh. It will engrave 
upon the spirit its acts and deeds. As ye think, so will ye 
act. If ye think justly, think truly, think rightly, so will 
your spirit take its impress, purified and upright. A heaven 
3 



34 ASTRONOMICAL RELIGION. 

will you carry within you — a heaven of innocence and truth, 
even as that lisping little one. 

These words, if they be true, shall be to you the words of 
eternal life ; if they be false, fear not, they must perish. 
We claim that ere you go forth to your Monday's work — ere 
ye once more approach the altars of trade and commerce to 
devote yourselves to the gods of dollars and cents, you have 
the right to ask and to know what they will do for ye in 
another life. The tale may have been often repeated to you, 
but at least we shall have the satisfaction, not only of offering 
the story once again, but the best reasons why you should at 
once accept the truth, and make it a part of your own lives 
by acting it out. This shall be our theme this night. 
For the present hour we part, commending ourselves to Him, 
the great spirit — God, who needs no consecration to render 
this building his temple. Was it not consecrated by his chil- 
dren, who, with strong arms, and willing and loving hearts, 
toiled in its erection ? Was it not consecrated with the 
patient labor that was striving to feed the little ones at home ? 
Was it not consecrated by the tender love of the laborer, 
who was caring for the helpless ones dependent on him ? 
Was it not consecrated when He made the atoms of dust, of 
which it is built ? Every particle of it is his handiwork. 

Oh, Spirit of God ! Great Father ! we bless thee that thou 
hast said, " Let there be light;" there shall be light. To thee 
we consecrate this hour. In thy dear name we have retraced 
once more the work of man. We everywhere find thy pre- 
cious hand, rending the veil of mystery, and letting in the 
light upon the gross darkness of the people. For it, we bless 
thy name. Thine forever — forever thine be the glory and 
the power. 



LECTURE SECOND. 



RELIGION OF NATUEE. 



DekYered at Kingsbury Hall, Sunday Evening, Oct. 21, 



[ At half past seven o'clock, Miss Habdingb appeared and resumed as follows : ] 
" For what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? " 

It is this tremendous idea — the possibility of bargaining, 
in one short moment, for the entire of eternity — it is this 
valuation of what must exist forever — -it is the hideous possi- 
bility of bargaining this away, which has placed the seal of 
greatness upon the name of religion. It is because there is 
no world, nothing within, around or about it, that any man 
can estimate in comparison with his soul, that has stamped 
this religion, queen of the world. Ere we proceed to offer 
some thoughts concerning that religion of nature which we 
know to be destined to supersede all man-made systems — ere 
we unfold to you the page of God's works, and measure them 
with the so-called page of God's word, permit us to remind 
you where religion has stood. Queen of the universe, before 
her shrines, kings, generals, merchants, men of business 
and men of leisure, the master and the captive, have bowed 
down in every age. All the magnificent temples of anti- 
quity — all the mighty monuments, whose colossal forms even 
now excite the amazement of mechanics — all the splendid 
dynasties and powerful kingdoms of ancient days — every art 
and every science in the days of their infancy, first took rise 
beneath the mighty patronage of the gods. All these things* 
bespeak for religion a pomp and power, a celebrity and 



36 RELIGION OF NATURE. 

solemnity which no other element of life can rival to-day. 
To religion, all the most glorious • fanes of earth have been 
created. In the name of religion, legions of human beings 
have gone forth and laid down their lives. Naught save 
religion could have stimulated the martyr to endure the 
leaping flame, eating with fiery agony into his body, whilst 
his faint lips still shouted hallelujahs to his God. Nothing 
but the stimulus of religion could have enabled the saints 
and martyrs, in long array, through all the ages, to endure 
the terrors of hideous death with the same joy with which 
they would have advanced to the bridal bed. In a word, the 
strongest emotion of the human heart is religion. Look 
abroad this day, and you will find that all the most solemn 
temples, the greatest amount of wealth, and the largest 
aggregation of • wealth, influence, and respectability, are 
devoted to, and enshrined in the name of religion. Quite 
one-third of the people's hard earnings arc laid on the altar 
of religion. The miser will part with his gold for religion, 
because he believes that in thus doing he is purchasing immu- 
nity from punishment, and that felicity which never perishes. 
The poor man is contented to walk beneath the shadow of 
adversity, and to battle with, and bear, up to his very lips, 
the waves of suffering flowing around him, provided you 
leave him the consolations of religion. The good and the 
bad shape their every hope and every fear by its dictates and 
influence. All cling, as their last refuge, to the altars of 
religion. Thus has she stood, and thus will she stand 
forever. 

Whether the religions have been good or bad, is not the 
question now. The great question is, by what means has the 
name of religion thus usurped the sovereignty of the whole 
earth ? The question might be answered in the simple 
sentence with which we have prefaced this address: " What 
shall a mail give in exchange for his soul?" To define, 
however, more clearly, the great secret of this vast empire 
OTer humanity, we may say that religion consists of three 
elements at least, and we propose now to give to the world 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 37 

these three elements : The Knowledge of God — The Immor- 
tality of the Soul — and a Perfect Standard of Life Practice. 
If you will consider carefully how much of human existence 
and of human welfare is concentrated in these three sublime 
elements, you will find that religion, if she had justified her 
claims, would have merited the lordship over man's heart. 
To know God, is to know the hands in which you are placed. 
You find there an anchor for every suffering soul — a perfect 
and steadfast anchor on which you can rely in every condition 
of life. It is to reconcile all the inequalities, all the apparent 
injustice, and all the possibilities of human existence. To 
know God, is to feel that you are in the hands of a Father ; 
it is to assure yourself of the same protection, and to rely 
upon Him with the same undoubting love and confidence 
with which the babe reposes on its mother's bosom. To be 
sure of immortality at once defines the object of your exist- 
ence, realizes the purpose of your destiny, unlocks the great 
mystery of why your life is open to a vast vista of possibili- 
ties, of hopes, and fears, and warnings, of attractions and 
repulsions. That is enough of itself to form a lamp to your 
feet, and establish you forever upon a system of life practice 
that will ensure you the best possible condition in the here- 
after. Life practice might well be said to grow out of those 
two thoughts. If ye know God, ye have your model. If ye 
comprehend our God, ye at once comprehend his laws, his 
purposes, and with them your own duties. To comprehend 
immortality will be a perpetual warning to all your aims and 
efforts. It will be the house you are laboring to erect, it 
will be the garden which you are planting, it will be that for 
which you are laying up treasures. And, oh Man ! out of all 
the world's teeming myriads, there are not as many hundreds 
who believe in a God, and in the immortality of the soul, as 
there are millions to whom these are the greatest of eternal 
truths, while they know it not. If ye believe in a God, ye 
never could, in view of his sublime presence, so willfully 
break the commands which ye everywhere find written in 
his laws. Ye could not put forth your numberless systems 



38 RELIGION OF NATURE. 

of religions, and tell of } 7 our thousand' and one different 
gods. Ye could not worship Him in the fantastic manner 
in which many of ye present your offerings. Ye could not 
this hour supplicate Him for sunshine on the one hand, and 
claim that He was wise enough to foresee, direct, and con- 
trive the laws that should produce the rushing storm on the 
other. Ye could not tolerate the spectacle of one army 
praying for victory over another — one army undertaking to 
slay thousands and millions of God's creatures, and yet 
soliciting his blessing to rest upon their work. Ye could 
not undertake to place army against army, deciding the con- 
test, and giving the victory to him who should cry the loudest 
to this God of war and desolation. Oh Israel ! Israel ! how 
unequal are thy ways ! 

Neither believe ye in the immortality of the soul, or if ye 
do, ye do not manifest it. Ye write on tomb stones, " Here 
lies," " Here remains," " Here sleeps ;" and ye do this in view 
of that word which tells you of the God of the living, which 
manifests the ever-living spirit in the various signs of com- 
munion where the mighty dead sit ministering to Jesus on 
the Mount of Transfiguration — to John on the isle of Pat- 
mos — to Saul in the cave of the woman of Endor. In every 
condition of life this immortality would be a lamp for your 
feet. Ye build houses for to-morrow ; why are none building 
mansions for eternity ? Alas! alas ! either ye do not believe 
what your religionists teach ye, or ye fail in your stand- 
ard of life practice. Ye have your standard, but unhappily 
ye make it a mutable one. Ye claim the best and purest 
love to the world — the simple law and commandment, do 
unto one another as ye would be done unto ; and which 
among y C does it? Which of ye to-day believes in and acts 
upon it, so long as there is any of your systems, or any one 
of your Thirty-Nine Articles, or any one of your creeds, which 
can give ye immunity for sin, offer ye a great theological 
sponge, which with a few words will wipe it all away? In 
a word, ye either make your religions and your traditions of 
none effect, or else ye do not believe in them. Nevertheless, 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 39 

religion exists. Religion has been, in one shape or another, 
the ruling principle of man's heart. He has clung to it 
because he believed it was to give him the priceless treasure 
of his immortal soul. And religion will exist; and that too 
upon precisely the same elements as she has hitherto pro- 
fessed to give you. 

We now proceed to inquire where this conqueror and 
controller of human destiny can be found ; where we 
shall be enabled to trace out that God, whom the prophet 
of olden times claimed was as high as heaven and as deep as 
hell. Surely, surely, somewhere in the works of the Maker 
we shall find him, or we shall hear him in the still, small 
voice. If we speak to the prophets of ancient times, we 
shall hear news of this far-off God. We observe that there 
can be but two means by which we can attain to an appre- 
hension of that which clearly transcends man's own ability 
to spell out. In the human heart, or in the human brain, the 
evidence of that which is past and that which is to come, 
does not exist. There is not one among ye, who, without 
the exercise of his senses, can undertake to tell what has 
passed in the very moment that has fled, outside of his own 
sphere of observation. How, by searching, do ye propose to 
find out the God of all ages past ? There is not one among 
ye, who, by the exercise of the faculties you now possess, 
can undertake to read the future with such accuracy as to 
determine, when, or how, or whether at all, your mortal feet 
shall bear ye from where ye now sit, to that door. How, 
then, by searching, do ye expect to find out that immortality 
ye have never tried ? There must be some other way than 
by the exercise of that which ye term your reason. Reli- 
gionists know this, and therefore they have protected their 
systems by claiming that they come from the ministry of 
angels — from spirits who know of God, and are in the expe- 
rience of immortality. There is not a system on the known 
earth, but what has founded itself upon what is termed the 
revelation of spiritual beings. This revelation must in itself 
contain evidence. But can this define the conditions of all 



40 RELIGION OF NATURE. 



times and of all ages ? Are the witnesses of eighteen hun- 
dred or two thousand years ago reliable ? Let us examine 
their claim. The prophets — who believed them? who 
accepted their report ? They were hunted from society, 
scorned and persecuted, outcasts, driven to the wilds and 
deserts, men of caves and forests, of plain and wilderness. 
Those who surrounded them did not accept of their evidence. 
We are told that, eighteen hundred years ago, eleven men 
saw a spirit ; and this is the evidence of the immortality of 
the soul. Out of the eleven, some worshiped and some 
doubted; and among the whole eleven witnesses, not one 
was found true enough, careful enough, patient enough, strong 
enough, to stand by their master in his hour of agony. They 
all forsook him and fled. And upon the uncertain testimony 
of these faithless followers, even divided among themselves 
when the risen spirit stood before them, you are to pin your 
faith for all future ages. Such is the revelation these systems 
present to you. Where these systems came from, we this day 
traced ; what they were, we showed you. To-night it will 
be our purpose to offer ye a wider system of revelation, and 
a standard that cannot vary. 

We claim that there are two modes of arriving at the same 
conclusion : the one by the works of the Maker ; the other 
by his Word. The works we shall consider first. We search 
for God. Let us take the tree — that is enough. We find 
evidence there of design, intelligence, wisdom, love, power. 
There is not a blade of grass, nor a forest tree, that does not 
manifest all these. We do not now take the telescope, and 
ask you to gaze upon the multitude of shining worlds that 
night by night troop up to manifest the immensity of God's 
handiwork. We take the small blade of grass, the leaf of 
the forest tree. We perceive here an order, a system of 
calculation, a design. Wc perceive that that design is good. 
It means shelter; it means use; it means beauty. Every por- 
tion of that familiar, yet strangely-devised, little structure is 
good Cor man; good for the fowls of the air, and good for 
the beasts of the field. Wc take the grains of sand by the 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 41 

sea shore ; they all tell the same tale. We take the leaf of 
the ancient forest tree. Millions of years have rolled over 
thy head, oh mighty forest tree ! and yet thou art living 
still. Untold ages ago, we see thy head, oh dark and ancient 
fern ! raised up into the thick, dusky atmosphere. Man nor 
beast was there to behold thee in thy solitary grandeur. Earth 
was yet fresh from its birth, in that awful hour when it rose 
from the deep that was without form and void. Thou wert 
the first of these ancient, marvellous monarchs of the forest, 
through which the desolate winds swept — the only sound 
then heard on the unpeopled earth. The time came when the 
great ocean passed over thy head, when the huge billows of 
ancient seas bore thee down and crushed thee, deep, deep, 
beneath their leaping waves. There didst thou lie, ancient 
forest fern, for untold ages. At length came the sun and the 
winds, and at length the waves of ocean receded once more. 
And now, oh tree ! peat, and bog, and moss accumulate and 
pile in irregular mass, where once the ancient forest tree 
was found. More changes; more years; more leaping 
surges ; more receding seas ; strong and mighty winds ; great 
tempests ; blackness, and storms, and desolating ages, as the 
earth grows older, until at last the place of thy dwelling is 
found no more ; and great mountains uprear their rocky, 
everlasting heads, where once, thou, forest fern, wert the 
only inhabitant. And now comes busy man, with pick, and 
spade, and mattock, delving into the heart of the ancient 
mountain, and lo ! he finds that in the still lapse of ages, 
while imbedded in earth's mystic laboratory, the forest tree, 
that so long battled with the elements, has undergone a won- 
drous transmutation. 

" Nothing of it that doth fade, 
But doth suffer a sea-change, 
Into something rich and strange." 

The delicate fern leaf has become a solid mineral. The blos- 
som and the branch are transformed into the useful coal, 
stored up for man's necessity. He digs them up ; he carries 
them to his home ; and, in the light and warmth they diffuse 



42 RELIGION OF NATURE. 



through his household, in the sunny smile of love, and the 
bright eye of beauty, their ancient glory is rekindled. If not 
this, he fills the great furnaces with the dense and ponderous 
relics of the ancient forest, from which comes forth the steam- 
ing gas to be conducted into the blaze that now lights these 
mortal eyes [pointing to the gas-burner, immediately in front]. 
There art thou gleaming, ancient forest fern ; in every par- 
ticle of leaping flame, a portion of thy life is to be found. 
Oh, little flame ! is thy existence ended yet ? With every 
moment of thy fiery life, thou art passing into the atmosphere. 
Thou art penetrating all the chinks and crannies of the heart 
and frame of man. He breathes thee ; he assimilates thee, 
with every portion of his structure ; he builds up a temple to 
the holy spirit, with thy gaseous emanation. We will not 
trace up thy life further, oh, thou little fern leaf! Whilst 
thou art blazing and dancing thy shimmering life away, we 
see thy spectral finger writing upon the flame — God, the 
Creator, for none but he could do it. His arm alone could 
sustain thee through millions of ages. His love alone could 
contrive so beneficent a work, to lighten and bless and pros- 
per man. His wisdom alone could carve out a design of such 
wondrous chemistry as this. Oh ! we need not go and listen 
to the boom of the mighty ocean ; we need not wait for the 
thunder of the skies or the flash of the lightning ; we need 
not gaze into the immensity of space to find out God. Every 
forest tree, and every blade of grass will tell the tale — will 
show wisdom, design, calculation. 

We may not see Thee, oh creating, uncreated source of all ! 
We, finite beings, may never gaze upon the infinite ; we, frag- 
ments, may never apprehend the whole ; but wherever the 
truth of thy law, thy calculations and designs is found, there 
arc the foot-prints of an almighty and intelligent mind, writ- 
ten as plainly as man writes himself upon all his works. 
We seek for immortality, and the story of the fern leaf tells 
the whole talc. The sinking sun, as lie sets to-night, writes 
the same story of eternity, on the golden and purple skies. 
The beautiful spring-time, when she yields up her lip of 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 43 

flowers to the warm embrace of gorgeous summer, bids fare- 
well with a cry of " I will return." The golden summer, as 
the rich tints of autumn embrown her gorgeous cheek, bids 
farewell to the earth with the warning cry, " I will return." 
Every autumn breeze is laden with the same eternal sound ; 
and the booming winds of winter echo it in their solemn 
anthem; all repeat the perpetual pean of immortality, 
" Return, return, forever." Immortality is stamped upon 
everything that is. You cannot put a grain of matter out of 
existence. Ye may not, by searching, find out God. Ye 
may feel him, but ye cannot find him out. Ye can neither 
find out nor feel after that which ye term annihilation. Ye 
may ask, what has this to do with the human soul, since 
change is written on all forms ? How shall we determine 
that no change shall come to that part which we claim to be 
immortal, and which can only have immortality by virtue of 
individuality ? Aye, individuality — we have spoken the 
word, and that of itself signifies immortality. Individuality 
and change cannot exist together. If you change individu- 
ality, you find out annihilation. There is no such thing as 
annihilation. Individuality is an evidence out-wrought in the 
person of man, and until you can annihilate that, you never 
can change it. If you once change that identity, which says, 
" I am" — that consciousness that recognizes itself, and it does 
not speak individuality, the change is so mighty that it 
amounts to annihilation. Your own soul tells the tale. We 
do not claim, as many have done, that the longing for immor- 
tality tells the whole tale ; although we do not believe in a 
God of mockery, although we do not believe that any fiend 
has placed before the longing, aspiring soul of man, the craving 
for eternity, merely to mock him with its shadow ; yet, that 
is not our only evidence. We find that there is in the spirit 
a constant progress ; from the cradle to the grave, the spirit 
manifests growth, but never change. Whatever is impressed 
upon the consciousness of the babe, remains with the old 
man. Whilst every grain of matter in your form passes and 
changes, and becomes lost in the immensity of space, it may 



44 RELIGION OF NATURE. 

be, to be re-incarnated in some other form — whilst your bodies 
are forever throwing off and replacing their particles of 
foreign matter, from all substances around you, your spirit 
never changes. It is like a thread, upon which matter is 
strung, as beads are strung. Forms are forever changing, 
but the individuality of the spirit, whilst it is constantly 
marked by fresh conquests over knowledge, never loses one 
grain. 

All things in nature reach their perfection here, except the 
spirit. The flower, after its kind — the machine that you 
invent and construct, after its kind — all inanimate forms, 
after their kind, are perfect in their life ; but what perfection 
does man find for all the energies, all the faculties, all the 
aspirations, the hopes, the longings, the wishes, the fears of 
his heart, shuddering at annihilation ? They either speak of 
immortality, or were given in mere mockery. Who among 
ye white-haired old men, as ye plant your trembling feet 
on the verge of the grave, can say: "My soul is full; I 
ask for no more ; my soul is the perfect flower of my exist- 
ence ; there is no more to be added " ? The cry is still for 
to-morrow ; the cry is still for light ; and the dim eye opens 
like a window of the soul looking through upon eternity, and 
still searching for and feeling after the endless vistas of a 
perpetually returning to-morrow. These are the evidences 
of immortality. This quenchless, indestructible principle in 
which ye live and are placed — matter — ye cannot destroy 
this ; how much less can ye crush out the light of the change- 
less, immortal spirit ? Nature tells the whole tale. 

And for life practice, do ye need a standard ? Though 
Confucius had never lived; though Zoroaster and Buddha, 
though Osiris and Esculapius and Bacchus had never taught ; 
though all the gods of Greece and Rome and Egypt had 
never enunciated their systems, that rule which Jesus, the 
last of the prophets, taught, that to do unto men as ye would 
be done unto, was the only perfect standard, would still 
have been known. The ancients knew and felt and practiced 
it long ere sects and systems of worship'had their day. The 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 45 

very first nations of the earth knew it. They recognized it 
in the eternal gospel, which preaches it through every stone 
and grain of sand. While love — that love which gives, 
that justice which demands not in return, is an eternal prin- 
ciple ; it forms the standard throughout all nature. Try it 
even in its lowest forms. Do to the rocks as ye would have 
them do unto you. Treat them well ; work them well and 
carefully ; beware how ye dash them in pieces in scorn and 
anger, or they will answer no good purpose. Break them 
with care and treat them with kindness and they will build 
your houses and return your care a thousand fold in good 
uses. Care for the metals ; work the iron carefully ; let the 
gold be wrought with love and tenderness ; labor with all 
the faculties and all the energies, aye, with all the scrutiny 
of the finest justice, to perfect the metals, and they will 
return you their uses a thousand fold. Love the unpolished 
gems, deal with them with gentle and unwearied hand, treat 
them as though you loved them, and they will smile in your 
face with all the radiant beauty of answering love. Love 
the grains of sand, and they will give you the plates of 
shining, crystal glass. Care for the little flower, and it will 
bestow its perfumed breath upon you. Love the rocks, and 
they will shelter you ; love the winds and the waves, and the 
sweet sunshine that spreads over your heads, and the skies 
above, and they will stretch away their mighty, protecting 
arms to catch the breezes and waft to you their fragrant 
breath. The rocks give up the debris of their decaying 
forms, under the influence of warmth and sunlight, in order 
to produce flowers and sweet vegetation ; and the flowers 
love the air and sunlight ; as they drink in the sweet dews 
of morning, and rejoice beneath the golden light of the radi- 
ant siin, they give forth their perfumed loveliness, and they 
stretch upward their shining heads to greet with a merry laugh 
the passing zephyr, rejoicing that the sun loves them, and 
they grow in his healthful beams. All nature tells the tale 
of universal justice and universal love. But when you come 
to man, you see how perfectly the tale of love and justice 



46 RELIGION OF NATURE. 

and kindness is engraven upon every human soul. By what 
consciousness does the little child stretch out its arms to the 
being that is kindest to it? If nature had not written upon 
its tender mind, love, as the first element of knowledge, this 
recognition of kindness could never be. Look in the face of 
the young school-boy, and ask what makes that fearful, 
anxious lace light up with sudden joy, and brighten with 
such gladness, that the poor dunce will slave over his lessons 
to bring them perfect to the kind master ? The one cheer- 
ful word, the one look of love, the one tone of encourage- 
ment, will sink into that young, loving heart, and stimulate 
him to a task that not the hardest blow would drive him to 
perforin. Try it with the young man, as he goes forth to 
seek in the cold, hard world the way to fortune and fame. 
Can the voices of his earlier years, can the gushing words of 
lovo ever leave him ? Back to the companions, back to the 
maid of his heart, back to the one true and only being on 
earth, that can speak in those tones that nothing on earth 
can rival ; and thou, simple maid, will ever return love, love. 
It is still the interchange of something stronger than self, 
dearer than one's own nature. This has made the world 
beautiful and good, and redeemed it from the hard iron rule 
of self. Try it with the stern warrior, as he returns from 
the battle field, with the blood-stained wreath of victory 
around his brow; as the applauding shouts ol' millions 
resound in his car; as the trophies of victory are strewn 
before him, where docs that eye look most fondly, and most 
anxiously for applause; where does it find the only applause 
that goes straight to the heart, and makes the warrior the 
man ': In the eye of the dear companions he had left at home ; 
in tlu i sound of the little child's feet as it runs across the 
floor to meet him; in the one precious word, father. Then 
the warrior is forgotten, the victory is uncared for, the shout 
Of nations is drowned; all the laurels, all the pomp, and all 
the fame he has gained, are laid at the feet of love. Oh 
man ! man | from the cradle io the grave, from the voices of 
the How crs to the din oi' the hard, metallic world ; from the 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 47 

throbbing heart of every child to the burning bosom of every 
man, there goes forth the echo of that cry, that to do unto 
others as ye would have them do unto you, is the perfect 
standard of right, which exists throughout all nature. There 
is none other. Well may the great philosopher of Nazareth, 
the man whom some overwise amongst ye have called unsci- 
entific, and unphilosophical — well might he with far-seeing 
eye, with deep-seated consciousness, and clairvoyant percep- 
tion of past, present- and future, of all man's necessities and 
capabilities, sum up every law and commandment in this one 
simple teaching. 

Nature, is this thy gospel, or is it not ? Listen to the patter- 
ing rain drops.* Whence do they come ? Where have they 
traveled from ? From what distant worlds has the breath of 
the unknown God sent them ? Oh, they have lived forever ! 
They tell, with every wild gust and faint patter, of a God 
who had neither beginning nor shall ever know end. Alpha 
and Omega is in every sound. We cannot define their 
origin — they have lived from all time. They tell with sig- 
nificant voice the tale of immortality. They have come from 
dim ages, where they were manufactured, first in the shape 
of volumes of gaseous worlds ; then concentrated and crys- 
talized into the crust of your earth, passing through every 
variety of form until, at last, they find their lodgment within 
your bodies ; and passing out from thence in the form of gas, 
re-ascend to the eternal skies to be re-manufactured into the 
form of rain-drops. Their origin is with the great Alpha and 
Omega of eternity. Immortality, too, is in every sound. 
You never can destroy them. Life practice is there too. 
They bring their uses. As they sink within the violet cup 
they become absorbed in its beauty, and in its purity. As 
they return to earth for the irrigation of vegetation, they 
bring with them life, and health. Ere they leave the flower 
they carry with them the fragrance of its life ; they become 

* The rain, which had prevailed during the evening, at this time was increas- 
ing, and the patter of the drops could be heard without. To this the speaker 
alludes. 



48 RELIGION OF NATURE. 



incarnated, as it were, into its beautiful existence ; they 
become once again the earthy part, and it may be that ages 
hence they shall sparkle in the radiance of the glorious dia- 
mond. Progress, too, is another portion of this eternal gospel 
of nature, which the ages tell ; which the history of all 
nations teaches ; which the advance of every art, and every 
science indicates; which the history of planets, suns and 
stars proclaims ; which man himself spells out from the cra- 
dle to the grave, in a perpetual series of progressive experi- 
ments, each one leading to the culminating point when his 
spirit is set free, to put in practice the results of the follies, 
the trespasses, the hopes, the wishes, the aspirations which 
he has gained in his earthly career. This, too, is the great 
lesson, that equalizes all injustice, that gives to every human 
soul a chance, that assures every being that there is justice 
awaiting him in some condition, either here or hereafter. 
These are some of the lessons which we read from the great 
gospel of nature. But not until we have taken you deep, 
deep, and from the central fires that burn beneath, to the 
sparkling stars that gleam above you, can we read the opera- 
tion of the magnificent gospel which the finger of the 
Almighty himself has written. The great lesson, however, 
which all things tell, is, that there is an all-preserving arm, 
an all-sustaining power, a master mind, equal to the exigen- 
cies of all occasions, a force strong enough to uphold all, a 
mind affectionate and loving enough to do all things for man's 
use and benefit. 

A i'aw words on the subject of revelation. We have 
already shown you that the revelation claimed by your reli- 
gionists is imperfect. It is so not in essence, not in quality, 
but in quantity. First, we admit that man, from the gospel 
of nature, may by thought, by searching, find out God, define 
his own existence and read clear — aye, clear as sunlight — 
the whole path of his duty. We yet claim that man is not 
at present a thinking being; m an has too long been accus- 
tomed to yielding up the reins of thought to others more 
capable of spelling out the great purposes of nature, to take 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 49 

the reins himself; to pause in the headlong career of his 
daily duties, go out among the fields and the rocks, into the 
arts and sciences of nature, and spell out God. We find, 
therefore, that the good Father, compassionating the weak- 
ness of the creature He has made, has established a long 
line of revelation that, like a silver cord, has bound the ages 
together, until it has brought up the history of the race to 
its present degree of perfection. And thus we find, on one 
side, the history of naturalism, and on the other, that of 
supernaturalism. There stands the dry history of the race — 
wars, and politics, and governments, the rise and fall of 
kingdoms ; and on the other side stand the history of ghosts, 
and spectres, and apparitions, of morbid spirits, of angels, 
of monsters of darkness and light, and all the signs and 
miracles and wonders, which in every age and country have 
been ranged beneath the title or placed in the domain of 
supernaturalism. Compare the two, and we believe that you 
will find that the one is the cause, the other the effect. 
When you begin to trace up the history of all ages, you have 
to borrow of supernaturalism. When you would trace up 
the foundations of kingdoms and dynasties — when you would 
ask, whence come the lost systems of government, still you 
must go to supernaturalism. When you desire to inquire of 
painting, music, poetry, sculpture, the traditions of all the 
social enjoyments and religious observances of mankind, still 
you must go back to supernaturalism. All that is grand and 
beautiful in history — all that is graceful in literature — the 
origin of every art and every science — all claim as a parent 
that convenient word, inspiration. That, traced to its origin, 
means the still small voice of supernaturalism. We know it 
is the custom of religionists to make one grand dive into the 
world of supernaturalism, and claim that, for a special period, 
for a special purpose, and under special circumstances, super- 
naturalism actually did mingle with the age of naturalism. 
Unfortunately, every nation makes the same claim, and when 
we desire to decide between them, we have to inquire 
whether they are all God's children or not. If we could 
4 



50 RELIGION OF NATURE. 



find that race, that religion, that people, that was not born 
of the same God, through the self-same laws, and under the 
self-same conditions, we should surely yield the palm to you, 
Oh Christians ! But since ye are but a fragment of the earth, 
and that a very small one — since ye have not originated any 
art nor any science yourselves, but have been content to spoil 
the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabians, the 
Jews, in a word, all nations, and then call them Christian, 
we find we are compelled, in simple justice, to own that 
every nation has had its measure of supernaturalism as well 
as yourselves. Where we take issue with you, then, Oh 
Christians ! is not in the fact of your claiming a spiritual 
origin for your religion, but in the atrocious fact that you 
deny it to others. You admit that spiritual beings can be 
the only revelators, except from analogy, except from that 
beneficent process of slow reason which insists that man 
should investigate the sources of being — should go out into 
nature and spell out her mysteries. Except by such process, 
it is impossible that any but spiritual beings can understand 
and define the spirit, God. Unless ye comprehend what 
spirit is — unless ye apprehend its existence, and measure its 
possibilities — unless ye can define its attributes, and learn 
that they are one and the same with the attributes of Him 
whom ye call God — " our God," ye may prate in vain with 
your thousand tongues, your religious systems of every age. 
Ye may define and measure your image of the soul, and then 
enlarge it and call it a God, but ye never can define the 
being that fills all space ; ye never can measure the Soul of 
the universe, until ye comprehend the soul within ye. As 
you are the type of him — as your soul acts upon the matter 
of your own body, so does the Soul of immensity act upon 
the matter of immensity ; and in no other way than by com- 
prehending and defining your own soul, can ye ever solve 
the question of a God. And who shall define it but the 
disembodied? Who shall bring ye news of a spiritual 
existence — who shall measure the length and breadth, the 
heighth and depth, the possibilities and attributes of spirits, 



RELIGION OP NATURE. 51 

save spirits ? When you ask for evidence, are you to take 
the evidence that they quote of eleven men, some doubting 
and some worshiping, when the great world of supernatural- 
ism stands open before you, with all its long-preserved tradi- 
tions, with all its undeniable facts ? And if that is not 
enough, take the naturalism and supernaturalism of this day, 
and reduce it to the simple laws of electricity, and you will 
find that supernaturalism is nothing more than the naturalism 
which grows out of the earth, as the soul grows out of the 
body. Aye, your days of supernaturalism are ended, and 
with its termination comes the last page in God's great 
gospel of revelation. 

Hitherto, we have limited our view to the works ; now we 
will take the word ; and where you find this differing from the 
works, distrust it. God's word can never be false, so long 
as it matches God's works. The word comes to us through 
fallible, human lips, or at least through the human medium. 
Whichever way you classify it, the medium of a finite being 
must be imperfect. Whatever you receive, therefore, of 
God's word, must be of a fragmental character. Whatever 
you receive of God's works, you receive in their immensity, 
all the laws, all the conditions, being written in the smallest 
as well as in the largest part. Revelation, therefore, is 
nothing more than an imperfect teaching, whether it come 
from the spirits, or from man, inspired by God himself. It 
can only be defined by the capacity of the medium ; it can 
only belong to the time in which it is given ; it can only be 
apprehended by you according to your intelligence of to-day ; 
and if you are a progressive people, that intelligence is not 
enough for to-morrow. Give us our daily bread for the body, 
is the cry of the materialist ; but wherefore do you not ask 
daily bread for the soul ? We will tell you why ye do not 
ask it — because it has been poured upon you ; because the 
measure has been pressed down and running over ; because 
the light has shone in the darkness, though the darkness 
comprehended it not. Nature, then, is the book, and spirits 
the teachers that enable you to read it. It is for the purpose 



52 RELIGION OF NATURE. 

of restoring you to that age of innocence, to that Garden of 
Eden, when, without gospel or creed, Bible systems or 
churches, man heard the voice of his God walking in the 
garden — it is for the purpose of initiating the great church 
of the universe, for building up the great altar of the human 
heart, for installing the high priest, God himself, and bring- 
ing into your visible presence the ministering acolytes, that 
beings who are in the experience of immortality, who 
know spirituality as a reality, have manifested their pres- 
ence to you — that modern Spiritualism has come, not 
to break down your religions, but to build them on the 
Rock of Ages — not to subvert your churches, but to 
build one large enough to contain the great, round, 
rushing world — not to take away aught that is good, but to 
give you that truth that shall make you free. But believe 
not — no, not a single word — that the works of the Maker 
do not verify. " Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try 
the spirits." Does it mean that ye shall quench prophecy, 
and despise prophesying and the spirits? Does it mean 
that ye shall not covet after spiritual gifts ? Does it mean 
that your sons and your daughters shall no more prophesy ? 
All these things, we reminded you to-day, belonged to your 
religious systems. Why do ye not indoctrinate them into 
your creeds ? Why do we not find them in your Thirty-Nine 
Articles ? Where are the signs that should follow them that 
believe, Oh Christians ? Or are there none among you who 
do believe, but modern Spiritualists ? Oh ! it is in vain to 
believe, with your religions or systems of mystery ; that 
mystery which is designed to keep you in darkness is the 
only veil that hides from you the God of nature, the divine 
will, and immortality, and perverts the pure and simple teach- 
ing of nature's law of right — that standard of right that 
req aires you to do to every one else, and every thing, pre- 
cisely what ye would have done unto yourselves. Farewell, 
religious systems, and all hail religion ! Farewell to creeds, 
and dogmas, and all hail to the word of the living God ! 
written on every page of all his works, and at last iuaugu- 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 53 

rated, in full and mighty reality, by God's ministers. We tell 
ye, men, there is not a rap, that ever sounded in the spirit 
circle, but what points you to nature — that bids you go forth 
to the works, before you take for authority one single word. 
There is not a dancing table, nor vibrating floor, not a 
single motion of the gyrating bodies, that ye scorn, and 
sneer, and scoff at — not one of these low and insignificant 
manifestations, but what speaks with trumpet tongue of im- 
mortality ; and never has it spoken and its utterance been 
established, unless it was based upon principles that are 
written in the gospel of nature. The book has been before 
you ; the priests have placed the seventh seal upon it, and 
defied it to break out. But the spirits at last have loosened 
it. You open it, and find that one word, Keligion. That 
is the purpose, — the meaning, the destiny of life ; the reli- 
gion of the seven days ; the religion of the blacksmith, and 
the mariner ; the religion of the builder, and the operative ; 
the religion of the machinist, and the merchant ; the religion 
of the trader, and the farmer ; the religion that does to every 
creature in every situation and condition of life, on every 
day of the week, and in every second of time, what he would 
have man do unto him. This is what you are required to do 
in exchange for what God has given you — your own soul. 

We would now willingly answer a few questions, if it be 
the pleasure of this audience to propound them. 

[A gentleman in the audience arose and asked the folio wing- 
questions :] 

" Is not spirit, or life, an eternal element, as reasonable 
a hypothesis as visible matter to be eternal, subject to eternal 
transmutation ? " 

" Conscious beings — their highest perfection being attained, 
can man be conscious of a higher divine essence ?" 

" May not the vital spirit of life be subject to transmuta- 
tion, unconscious of the past, presuming the future?" 



54 RELIGION OP NATURE. 

Miss Hardinge. — These questions would all require, for 
their perfect elaboration, too long a period for us to press 
upon the attention of this auditory. We will in brief refer 
to one question. The spirit may be termed in one sense 
transmuted ; that is to say, whilst the spirit, being here 
encased in the mortal body, neither knows nor gravitates to 
its proper sphere, the spirit in another world, by a simple 
transmutation, forms from itself these elements and surround- 
ing conditions, which it simply gathers up here from the ex- 
ternal. Here the spirit possesses houses, lands, circum- 
stances, and surroundings foreign to itself. In spirit land 
all these things are outworked from its own condition. This 
is, to some extent, a transmutation, and the only one which 
the spirit knows. The spirit cannot suffer change without 
annihilation. 

We have endeavored to dwell upon this point, feeling 
that it was pressed on by a strong and powerful mind in our 
audience. We now recognize that this thought has been 
pressing upon our questioner. We again insist that the indi- 
viduality of the spirit is inwrought with the consciousness, 
and can suffer no change without annihilation. Of the divine 
essence, we may not this night speak more fully. 

We will, with the pleasure of this audience, propose as 
the subject next in order to be considered, The idea of the 
Divine. Our question shall take this form : Who, what, 
and where is God ? Of what substance ? What quality ? 
What relation does he hold to man ? We will follow this, 
by considering the special nature of that element we term 
the spirit of man. We shall then be enabled to give those 
definitions which a few brief words would but ill convey to a 
mind so capable of analyzing for itself the conditions of 
mind, either in the human form, or what we term the general 
idea of God, as that which has presented our questions this 
night. We will not therefore trespass upon the patience of 
an overtaxed auditory. Once more we will request you to 
bring your questions prepared when next we meet. We 



I 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 55 

trust the time will better serve for allowing these question- 
ing minds to take counsel with their speaker. 

We now go forth into the solemn darkness ; but where 
is there darkness that mind has not illuminated ? We go forth 
into that great mystery of the future ; but where is that 
future which mind has not planned, calculated, foreknown, 
and foreordained ? To that Mind, then, we commend our- 
selves. What matters it by what name we designate it ? We 
may call it Allah, Brahma, Vishnu ; or we may call it Jeho- 
vah, or God ; it matters not, we know that it is with us, and 
that it is caring for us. Then do we commend ourselves to 
thee, Oh, viewless, formless Being ! King of light, and Lord 
of men, whom it is our dearest, best privilege to call Our 
Father. 



LECTURE THIRD. 



THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 



Delivered at Kingsbury Hall, Sunday Morning, Oct. 28, 



[Miss Hardinge appeared at a quarter before eleven, and resumed the series of discourses as 

follows :] 

" Canst thou by searching find out God 1 Canst thou find out the Almighty 
unto perfection 1 It is as high as heaven : what canst thou do 1 Deeper than 
hell : what canst thou know V* 

Such are the tremendous words by which ye children of 
the living God are barred out from coming to his footstool. 
Such is the floodgate that is let down between the knowledge 
of your Creator and you, Oh Creature ! The pean of the 
Man of Sorrows in ancient days, the great tragedy of Job, 
has been considered one of the most sublime representations 
of Him whom another taught ye to call Our Father. This 
day we propose to consider who, what, and where, is God. 
We remind ye of the thoughts of the ancient, because they 
are yet supposed to contain the grain of wheat, upon which 
ye are this day to make daily bread for your souls. But for 
these suggestions which we design to offer you, we propose 
to give ye another text. 

Knowledge is power. If ye possess the knowledge of the 
Author of your being, with it comes the knowledge of your- 
selves and your own destiny. Ye arc the children of two 
eternities. The ocean of infinity rolls upwards from the 
past, as well as upwards in the future ; and unless ye have 
the knowledge of the great ocean of power which surrounds 
yc — unless ye can circle eternity, ye know nothing. These, 



THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 57 

too, are days of materialism. Even among some of the 
brightest stars in the firmament of modern Spiritualism, 
there is a tendency to re-enter the shell from which you have 
sprung — there is a love for the earth — an adoration for the 
atoms — a worship for the dust out of which your material 
forms have been fashioned, that it is well for the true spirit 
at least to comprehend in all its bearings. It is with this 
view that we propose to ask your attention this day to the 
transcendental subject termed God. 

It is an acknowledged axiom, that the effect cannot be 
greater than the cause. It is an axiom of science, that all 
things are at work, from a centre to a circumference. Upon 
these two axiomatic principles, we might raise a claim of 
the absolute necessity for a God. The Spiritualist, however, 
has assumed another position. He looks upon matter, and 
pronounces it indestructible. He perceives everywhere the 
eternal progress of the atoms from one condition of beauty 
to another ; and he pronounces that the law of progress 
everywhere permeates matter. He says, "I perceive the 
cause of the law stamped upon matter. I find a sufficient 
cause in the atoms of which I am composed. I perceive 
everywhere that the law of progress eliminates itself out of 
the smallest point. Why should I search further ? Behold 
my God ! I perceive in the dust beneath my feet, in the 
dancing motes of the atmosphere, in every dew drop, in every 
blade, of grass — in all, I perceive my God. This is enough: 
my knowledge is power." What is that power ? The power 
of atomic law — the power of materiality. But is this all ? 
Is there nothing behind these flying spectres of the skies, 
these cometary vapors that have banded together to fashion 
your earth ? Is there nothing in those immense regions of 
space, where world after world troops up into the midnight 
vault of heaven, each one gravitating to its place, and rolling 
on from eternity to eternity in the same immovable, and yet 
ever-varying round, of law ! law ! law ! Aye, that is the word. 
Did law impress itself upon the atoms ? These mighty winds, 
these great storm-kings, that are turned loose to sweep the 



58 THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

earth — by what power are they restrained ? By what spirit 
of intelligence are they gathered up into the chambers whence 
they issued ? By what power and design is a boundary set 
to their violence and force, and they called home again to 
wait the bidding of further law to send them forth ? By 
what calculation and order have stars and systems been set 
in their places ; winds and tides each obeying the same sys- 
tem of order and calculation ? You talk of law impressed 
upon the blade of grass ; you find law in the cup of the lily ; 
and say this is enough to account for its radiant purity. Oh 
lily ! whence hast thou come ? Trace back thy origin day 
after day to the coarse ferns, and mosses, and lichens, of 
ancient days. Trace them again back to the trailing weeds 
of deep, fathomless seas. Trace them back again to the 
vapory mass of the comet, and still you find Him behind 
them all; every comet, every planet, every star, booming 
ocean, bellowing winds, whispering lily, and murmuring 
fountain, perpetually echoing God! God! God! The thought 
precedes the deed. Nothing can be so childish as to expect 
that one single impression of your finger is ever made inde- 
pendent of the little general that sits in your brain. We 
know that it has been contended by the materialist, that there 
are many of your acts, some of them the most powerful and 
effective for your preservation, that are performed by you 
independent of spirit. There are times in your lives when, 
unexpectedly, some yawning gulf opens before you, when 
some tremendous danger is lying in your pathway, that, by 
what you term instinct, independent of the slow processes of 
thought, you leap aside and are saved. You claim that is 
the instinct of self-preservation, acting quicker than the 
tardy movements of reason — that it is the instinct of the 
atoms. Or, it may be the word of power from some spirit to 
protect you. Spirit ! Aye, that is the word. Behind your 
own thought is spirit. Behind every spirit, or fragment of 
spirit, must have been a larger thought, to give that spirit 
1 icing. Until you can stand behind yourselves, and acknowl- 
edge yourselves your own creators, it is in vain for you to 



THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 59 

believe that the atoms which you govern are the cause whose 
elimination is your powerful soul, your mighty thought. 
Everywhere you find spirit first, thought next — matter acted 
upon : and yet again we repeat, that the materialist among 
you spiritualists, answers, in this great day of spiritual reality 
and spiritual triumph, that these atoms are the cause, and 
your magnificent organism of mighty, controlling spirit is 
but the effect. 

We propose this day to step behind these atoms, and see 
whence they obtain this wondrous, all-pervading law. We 
do not deny the indestructibility of matter, nor its eternity ; 
on the contrary, we claim that matter ever has been, and that 
matter must in all time have existence, since we find that in 
all time it retains its imperishable, indestructible nature. 
You cannot put this thing out of existence, out of life. You 
may destroy its form ; you may change the particles of its 
fabric ; you will do so ; it cannot preserve them longer than 
the use of this fabric requires them to be banded together ; 
but in whatever condition they exist, somewhere, either in the 
form of solid, fluid, or gas, they will remain forever. Again 
we. repeat it — ye stand between two eternities. Lives finite 
one way cannot be infinite the other. If there is infinity, 
eternity before, there is infinity, eternity behind ; and there- 
fore we conceive the fact that matter is eternal, and with it 
there is power that governs matter. Spirit, too, is eternal ; 
coeval, coincident with matter. We claim, then, that there 
are two eternal, coexistent principles, spirit and matter — 
spirit the positive and active, matter the negative and passive. 
Behind all forms, behind all creations, all worlds, and all 
times, we find these two eternal, ever-active agents. We 
also observe that spirit combining within itself intelligence, 
love, will, power, wisdom — these being the attributes of the 
spirits ye possess ; in the totality forming what we term God. 
We cannot dispense with this idea of God. It is as irra- 
tional, as illogical, that all things around you are phantoms, 
that the atoms among which you move are illusions, as to 
claim that spirit is illusion. If there is a world of light ; if 



60 THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

there is a permanent universe, with ten thousand millions 
of such worlds ; if you are composed and conglomerated of 
atoms yet intermingling, interpenetrating, guiding, governing, 
ruling, sustaining, observing, it is the all-potent, all-pervading 
element of spirit ; and this we choose to term God. This 
we will worship ; this we will lean on ; this we call Our 
Father; recognizing that from his immensity, God shakes 
out the scintillations of spirit, like star-dust ; that these 
scintillations of the Divine Spirit upon the atoms impress it 
with that which you term law, and give birth to the living 
forms of men and things around you. Again we find that 
there is a sublime recognition of this necessity in the history 
of the world. Man is a worshiping being, and ever has been. 
Man, in some fashion or other, has ever acknowledged an 
intelligential principle, which he calls God. It matters not 
through what strange and various ways, through what 
grotesque forms and idols, the ignorant ancients have endeav- 
ored to spell out God ; it is enough that they recognize him, 
bending to Isis, Osiris, and Buddha. In every phase, whether 
in the primary worship of light by the ancient Persians ; 
whether in the Sun-God of the ancient Egyptians, or Vishnu of 
the Brahmins ; in some form or other, the soul of every man has 
responded to the still small voice of the I AM within him. 
Man has never gazed upon himself without recognizing his 
Author, his Father, his God. Upon these propositions we 
stand ; we shall not enlarge upon them at this time further ; 
we propose rather to dwell upon the attributes of this God. 
As ye live in the present ; as this is your own ; as ye think 
of your God ; so do ye deal with one another. 

As we cannot expect that man should transcend his God, 
or that his own acts and deeds should be of a different char- 
acter from that being whom he acknowledges his model, and 
to whom he holds himself accountable, so do we conceive 
that the great question of this age is the definition of that 
God's dealing with man. We know it is the custom, in pul- 
pit and in press, when men would subdue the souls of their 
fellow mortals, and place before them the panoramic view of 



. THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 61 

their God, to take the telescope, go out into immensity, and 
endeavor to magnify the attributes of this tremendous power, 
in whose hands they are. We prefer to take the microscope. 
Ye, men and women ! are but a fragment of existence 
after all. It is of the seconds of time that your existences 
are made up. You may go forth into the battle field ; into 
the great game of life, and when you are called upon to act 
out some mighty part, you may find a giant strength afforded 
for the moment ; but it is in the daily practice ; in the small 
hours of thought ; in the little seconds of daily welfare, that 
your life, your spirit, and your character are made up. It is 
with these things, then, that we propose to deal. We will 
bring down our God from the immensity of his incomprehen- 
sible being to the atom. We will see if we cannot, by 
searching, find him out in the grains of life. 

We propose, then, with microscope in hand, to take the 
very smallest of God's works ; one of the most insignificant 
and almost imponderable evidences of his power, and from 
this we will spell out the gospel of our God's dealing with 
men. Aye, we will even take the little breath that is now 
parting these lips. We have again and again found it neces- 
sary, when men of great thought, mighty mind, and large 
capacity, were overwhelming us with stars, and suns, and 
systems, to descend to details, to examine the fragments of 
our being, and to see if we could not find our God nearer 
home than the distant skies. Take, then, the little breath 
that parts our lips. All of eternity is in that little breath. 
Let us see where it comes from, before we trace up its pro- 
gress in the future. We find that there is a great central 
point in the human structure called the heart. Knowledge 
is power. We observe that if we know this centre within 
ourselves ; if we know that man is a microcosm of all crea- 
tion, we shall also know that the immensity outside of our- 
selves, has a centre like ourselves ; here, then, is our God ; 
here, then, is the central point of life for the atoms of our 
body, the heart. On one side of this heart is a great tube, 
which we term an artery ; forth from these tubes flows out 



62 THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

the life current. When it passes from the artery it is red ; 
the deep, sanguine color, which is life ; as it leaves this 
great artery, it passes into innumerable tubes, termed arte- 
ries. Arterial blood is always recognized to be deep red. 
After a certain period of passage through the body, it leaves 
the arteries, and passes into what are termed veins ; it then 
becomes almost black, but not until it has coursed through 
nearly all the body. It leaves the heart red and pure ; it 
returns to it through the veins black and corrupt ; because, 
by traversing the course of the body, it gathers up all its 
impurities. It leaves it charged with oxygen gas ; it returns 
charged with carbonic acid gas. It leaves it full of the pure 
atmosphere of heaven, and returns to it full of the corrupt 
atmosphere of earth. It now re-enters the heart, passes 
through other lobes, and supplies the lungs, through which 
it becomes again liberated by the atmosphere of heaven, 
and returns into the air the pure, red arterial blood. The 
air which now surrounds you ; the breath that comes fresh 
from the far distant realms of space ; the sweet and potent 
breath of our God ; the mighty winds which everywhere are 
sweeping through space, and come laden with the fragrant 
perfumes of other climes ; the balmy atmosphere of those 
radiant worlds, where love and purity are found. In this 
system, the fresh and genial atmosphere gradually descends 
through your thick, murky air, and enters your lungs ; and in 
a few seconds of time, in one little circuit of motion, every 
breath which you drink in, forms the entire round of your 
body, and becomes in that round changed from the red arte- 
rial to the dark venous blood ; this is the origin of every 
breath. Here do you find the wondrous course it pursues ; 
through ten thousand millions of different channels every 
breath passes — through the wondrous cavity of the brain — 
through all the nerves, the fibres, and the sinews — through 
all the crooks, the hinges, and the joints ; for within man 
arc mechanical physics. There is the great system of pneu- 
matics ; the great system of hydrostatics, water, fluid, every 
conceivable element, all arc within you ; all these are tra- 



THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 63 

versed by one little breath ; every portion is elaborated by 
one little breath. And now it has coursed the entire circuit 
of this wondrous structure of man, and passes out from your 
lips ; and now we propose to trace its future history on to 
the next eternity. Coming from whence ? coming from those 
dim, mysterious worlds, that appear to be almost on the rim 
of space ; coming from that illimitable distance which your 
astronomers tell you it takes millions of years for the light 
to travel through ; that little breath has come with the balmy 
airs of distant lands. It has now performed its circuit 
through your body, where now does it go ? 

By the great galvanic battery of the lungs, the breath is 
forced out through your lips ; the blood enters through the 
arteries red, it leaves through the veins black ; the breath 
enters pure, it leaves a deadly poison. Your chemists tell 
you that if you could be so contrived that the breath of the 
body turned back to it, in a few minutes of time its poison- 
ous exhalations would destroy you. If that breath had not 
been forced outwards ; if it were permitted to hang around 
your lips, you would inevitably perish beneath its baleful 
influence in a few seconds. It leaves you carbonic acid gas ; 
where does it go to ? Does it not, as ye mingle with one 
another, fall on and destroy the uncertain lives of those with 
whom you every moment converse ? No, because, being car- 
bonic acid gas, it is heavier than the atmosphere, it falls 
through it and sinks down to the ground ; now it reaches the 
ground, being thicker than the atmosphere ; why does it not 
accumulate, until at last you are steeped in it ; until at last 
it reaches your lips, and the poison drags you beneath its 
baleful influence ? Because the carbonic acid gas of your 
bodies is the life of the beautiful vegetable world. Every 
blossom and every fruit ; every leaf, and every mighty forest 
tree, drinks it in. It becomes the daily bread of flower, and 
tree, and root. There is a means provided by which the 
poison is absorbed, and returned to you, in part, in the 
delightful, healthful world of vegetable life ; in the sweet 
perfume of the flowers, all its baneful effects are lost. In 



64 THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

the delicious breath of the rose, the poison is transmuted 
into fragrance ; in the purity of the lily, it is changed into 
the most exquisite and delicate beauty ; in the useful root and 
the luscious fruit ; in the waving grass, and sheltering tree ; 
in all these, a portion of your little breath is found again. 
There is another portion of it that is not found. It is patent 
to you all, that in new lands, where there is a vast accumula- 
tion of decaying vegetation, the miasma of fever would 
steam its pestilence from the ground. Why is this ? Because 
in decaying vegetation a part of your breath is found again, 
and but a part. With the death of every plant there goes 
forth the emanation called hydrogen gas. This, too, is a 
deadly poison, if drank in by you unmixed. What would 
be the consequence then, if the vast exhalations of decaying 
vegetation should become so great that they should rise up 
and drown you in their baleful embrace ? But this cannot 
be. By another contrivance of some great Chemist, perhaps 
of the atoms, perhaps of the generous gas itself, hydrogen 
gas is lighter than the atmosphere, and as it passes your lips, 
only a small part of it is allowed to accumulate in poison and 
pestilence. Now we find a little part of the breath ascend- 
ing in hydrogen gas ; it speeds away to the great banks of 
clouds that are waiting for it in the atmosphere. It there 
commingles with the oxygen. The sparks of electricity pass 
through it, and it returns to you in the form of the beautiful 
rain drop ; in the wholesome dew and the precious shower ; 
it falls into the rivers ; it supplies the fountains ; it makes up 
the immensity of the mighty ocean ; you sail your ships upon 
it ; you send your fleets for commerce and for conquest over 
its vast surface ; you drink it in again ; it irrigates your 
gardens ; it is the motive power by which all your machinery 
is worked ; it is the origin of all the various blessings of 
civilization which you send from pole to pole. The delicious 
spices of India, the tea of China, the products of the looms 
of Persia ; the cotton of America ; the fabrics and the 
growths of far distant lands, arc all borne upon a portion of 
this little breath. And still the sun drinks it, still the moon 



THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 65 

calls it up in the leaping tide ; and still the vapors of ocean 
go forth to return to you again in atmosphere ; and so it runs 
its course, on, on, forever. 

We enter the grand ocean of the eternity of the future. 

This is the history of our little breath. You cannot see 
it ; you can hardly weigh it ; you can scarcely feel it ; it is 
hardly palpable to any one of your senses ; and yet you stand 
before it, and read a gospel of love, and wisdom, and power, 
such as all the chemists that have ever lived could never 
contrive. Oh ! think of the love that so wisely and beauti- 
fully orders that you shall be thus cared for ; that your 
bodies shall be thus fed with this one wholesome breath. 
Oh ! think of the love that has so contrived that every part, 
aye, even to the paring of a nail, shall be revived even with 
this same beautiful breath. Oh ! think of the kindness that 
has so constructed that breath, that it shall be heavier than 
the atmosphere and fall to the ground; that it shall be 
lighter than the atmosphere after it has passed through the 
flower, and leave the heavy portions, and returning again a 
poison, that it shall ascend above you. Oh ! think of the 
beneficence that sends down the wholesome rain, and the 
precious dew, to bless you once again. Oh ! think of the 
wisdom that has contrived it ; of the resistless power that is 
able to carry it into action. 

Know thyself! With knowledge is power indeed. With 
such a knowledge as this, tracing out the gospel with one 
little breath ; tracing out the immensity of love and wisdom, 
of kindness and strength, that is thus manifested. Oh, do you 
not possess power ! Aye, like your Father, almost a demi- 
god. And may you not find the knowledge you possess 
change the conditions of the earth ? May you not by this 
knowledge calculate the forces of human life, upon the vege- 
table world, and upon the atmospheric world ? May you 
not so purify yourself, as to make the earth better, the flowers 
brighter, the trees mightier, the air purer, the skies more 
resplendent, through such an outworking through yourself? 
Possessing this vast knowledge, may you not do as your God 
5 



66 THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

has done — change every condition and impress the laws of 
your own knowledge of everything that you thus compre- 
hend ? We tell you, Oh Man ! the history of that little 
breath ; if any of your chemists on earth could contrive 
anything half so beautiful ; half so wise ; or half so won- 
derful ; you might well claim that the atoms that made up 
the chemists are the gods, the cause, and the origin, of a 
spirit so good, so beautiful, and so wise. But you require 
that God's dealings with man shall be narrowed down, each 
one to his own state. You look upon your own career, and 
many of you mourn in sorrow ; many of you languish in 
pain ; many of you suffer by the bitter despotism of burning 
heat, and the freezing snow ; many of you are perishing for 
food, and still more are stamped with the degraded seal of 
criminal passion. Here you pause ; you may acknowledge 
that the cup of the lily and the rose, the little breath that 
passes your lips, are all full cf the wisdom and power of God ; 
but it is in your own human destiny that you look for more 
uniformity and happiness ; that you ask for cause ; that you 
demand why you are the victims of the effect of pain and 
anguish. 

In olden times they talked in parables. Man will see 
upon his neighbor's face what he will not recognize in him- 
self. Once more, then, permit us to review the mode of 
teaching in ancient time, and present you with a parable by 
which you shall learn how God works out light, through all 
man's darkness. We perceive that man has ever been 
searching for what he terms the cause of evil. This has 
been the great problem of the ages. The ancients found it 
in the absence of their sun-god. You know that there is a 
power behind the sun. You know that the seasons arc not 
gods, and that the conflict of summer and winter is not the 
cause of evil, although it may be its type. This is not suffi- 
cient lor you. This was not sufficient for a man, who, gazing 
over (lie world's mysterious order, cried, " All things are 
evil. Happiness is a phantom that constantly Hies from me. 
1 call the sun into the tribunal of my judgment. I lay the 






THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 67 

charge of evil against its burning beams. I summon the 
winds into the court of inquiry too ; I find that they are 
stern and violent ; they uproot the forest tree and they tear 
down the noblest works of man. I ask the storm-king, the 
king of the frosts and of the ice, and I find that each one 
carries the sceptre of destruction. I look upon my fellow 
men, and I find that every arm is against me. Oh, it is evil ; 
all things are evil. I will go forth and leave the cities of 
civilization. I will seek in the wilds and solitudes of nature, 
to wear out the remnant of that life which is stamped with 
the bane of evil." And forth the pilgrim went ; and as he 
passed upon his way, the burning sun impressed his brain, 
and kindled up the fires of fever in his veins, so that he 
sank beneath its baleful influence. Long he lay the subject 
of wild delirium, shrieking against the terrible sun-god, that 
had thus struck him down ; but when the sweet breath of 
health once more fanned his lips, he listened to the low tones 
of kindness around him. He felt the pressure of gentle, 
sympathetic hands stretching over him ; he heard the gentle 
and tender tones of those who were striving to comfort him ; 
he leaned upon the strong, warm arm of hospitality, and he 
reposed on the kind bosom of friendship ; for the first time 
his frozen heart was open to the tender ties of sympathy ; 
he found that the tendrils of affection which they had 
stretched over him, had twined around his own nature, and 
made it better and truer ; and as he passed the threshold of 
the roof that sheltered him, he fell on his knees and cried, 
Oh, Sun-God ! I thank thee, that in the hour of adversity, 
that in the pangs of suffering, that in the agonies of pain, 
I have at last found the glorious bond of human love, human 
sympathy, and human tenderness. And with that the traveler 
passed on. 

As he passed into the depths of the forest, and into the 
midst of the plain, he every where found the poisonous rep- 
tile and the stinging insects around him ; and again he mur- 
mured and cried, " Is there nothing but evil ; shall I still be 
a subject of these cruel pains ; what shall I do to repel the 



68 THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

torture that is forced upon me ? " Then he turned to mother 
Nature, and he found that for every wound there was a balm; 
for every sting, there was some healthful herb and valuable 
drug. He gathered up these ; he stored his brain full of the 
wonderful lore of nature's great laboratory, and lo, he began 
to comprehend his own frame ; he spelled out the first rudi- 
mental principles of anatomy, and he began to match with 
these the rudimental principles of medicine. Here first took 
rise the knowledge of the structure of the human form ; the 
knowledge of the healing art ; and he blessed the stinging 
insect, and the poisonous reptile, that they had opened up to 
him the comprehension of his own frame ; the understanding 
of the glorious balms ; of the hygiene of nature. As he 
passed on, the storms of winter began to throng around him; 
the bitter frost and keen knife of the north-west winds 
pierced his soul and rent his garments. Again the pilgrim 
murmured, and as he murmured, the thought of shelter 
suggested itself to him. He removed the forest trees; he 
piled up loose stones, and built himself a dwelling; and as he 
looked upon his work, and strove to adorn it, he blessed the 
storm-king and the cruel knife of the wind that had carved 
out for him the rudimental principle of architecture. Great 
Gothic cathedrals, noble temples, far-spreading galleries of 
art and science, useful dwellings — all began to loom up with 
prophetic power before his eyes, as he observed the neces- 
sity of shelter from the storms of winter, and he cried, 
" Nature, thou art very good ! Only man and animals are 
cruel to one another." 

As the sweet spring came on, and the flowers raised their 
gorgeous heads to the forest trees, and put on their garments 
of green, rejoicing, he went forth from his shelter and tossed 
his arms abroad with joyous energy, and cried, " Oh, welcome 
health and gladness ! " But then he observed that the ancient 
trees, as they fell to the earth, crushed beneath them many 
a sweet and innocent flower. "Alas ! " he cried, " one thing 
ever destroys another ; it is all evil still. These ancient 
forest trees perish, and with the crushing fall of their mighty 






THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 69 

trunks, they carry the little flower down to destruction." 
But as he murmured, he heard the whisper of the zephyr 
rejoicing in the death of the flowers ; he saw that every atom 
was made more refined because they had lived and died ; he 
saw, too, that weeds were thus destroyed ; he saw that the free 
air was permitted to come through the close boughs of the 
forest; he saw that broad savannas were opened by the 
death of every forest tree ; he saw this destruction was sink- 
ing deep into the earth, and impressing itself into the form 
of mineral treasures ; he found that the coal which he had 
gathered up during his cold and loneliness, was formed of this 
decaying matter, and he blessed the forest trees because they 
died, and carried with them the treasures of nature, to harden 
into useful mineral, and there was no man to do the work so 
well. He passed on his way, and again he murmured as he 
beheld the hawk pounce upon the little sparrow, as he beheld 
the strong beast destroy the smaller one, and the large reptile 
prey upon the tiny insect. " Alas ! " he cried, u still destruc- 
tion, still destruction ! " But now the vision burst upon him 
of an earth teeming with a population that needed to be 
destroyed ; of an animal creation, growing more and more 
beautiful, because they preyed upon each other — because they 
consumed those organic forms that in turn entered into the 
organization of higher organic forms, thus producing higher 
species. He saw that, with every insect that perished, the 
creature that fed upon it became better ; the atoms of its 
body progressed, and as it yielded up its life, the lime and 
chalk and carbon of its form became better, because it was 
raised of the lower forms of earth. He found that the forest 
and the desert were thus cleared of their great superfluous 
existence, which would otherwise have filled the earth to 
repletion, and perished for want of nourishment. And at 
last he was fain to cry out, " Oh, Nature ! and nature's God ! 
whatever thou art, thou hast written thy sovereign laws upon 
matter ; thou doest all things well. It is man alone that is 
in fault. With man alone there is evil. I will go back to 
the cities of civilization ; I will spell out the great problem 



70 THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

of evil ; I will yet comprehend why man alone is rebellious 
to the great creative laws of wisdom and love." And as he 
embarked upon the ocean, he beheld the beautiful ship — the 
noble leviathan of the deep — with all her freight of human 
souls perishing. He heard their despairing shrieks ; he saw 
the raging waters close over them, and he listened to the 
wild pean of the winds singing their requiem, and the deep 
bellow of the thunder chanting their funeral hymn. He saw 
the torches of the skies lighting them to destruction, and the 
mocking billows rise with their feathery heads to heaven. 
This was the winding sheet of the glorious dead. " Oh, 
Ocean ! " he cried, " thou fell monster ! Oh, Man ! thou help- 
less victim ! why, why is this ? " But as he murmured, the 
ocean became tranquil, the air was stilled, and lo ! upon the 
waves of atmosphere he saw the ascending forms of the per- 
ished dead. He beheld the captain and the mate, the sea-boy 
and the sailor, and every one of that crowd, and all with 
their pale, dead faces upturned to the skies. Upward, 
upward they passed, not into death, but into life. And as 
they lived, they bore with them the knowledge of their fail- 
ure and misfortune, and he heard them whispering into the 
ears of living men, fresh systems of navigation, fresh ideas, 
fresh methods of maps and charts. He heard them conveying, 
through the sweet low tones of inspiration, tales of unknown 
continents. He beheld the dead mariners, the perished vic- 
tims, risen from the lower deep, sound in the ears of new 
Columbuses, tales of undiscovered Americas. He saw each 
one of those who had passed through the dangers of the deep, 
in which they themselves had perished, by experiment, and 
by failure, capable of becoming ministers to the living, in 
whose hands lay the future, and through whose brain and 
genius yet unborn millions were to march to the conquest of 
new worlds. " Let the ship perish," lie cried ; " let the deep 
swallow up her victims, since she gives up their spirits puri- 
fied by their passage, inspired and strengthened by the 
failure and the suffering through which they have passed." 
Now lie hails the law of civilization. And hero he pauses 



THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 71 

before the pale seamstress in her lone garret. He watches 
her whilst her dim eyes, her weary fingers, and her stooping 
shoulders, labor over her work. He sees her as she speeds 
through the twilight gloom with a heavy weight of toil press- 
ing her down. He sees her weeping over the memory of her 
young days vanished ; over the recollection of merry sports, 
and happy childhood's home, sweet, green fields and flowers, 
— now all shut out from her heart. He sees on the fair, 
silken, glistening garments of fashion, her life-blood drop by 
drop pouring down. He hears the rustle of the green grass 
over her untimely grave, waving among the flowers which 
adorn the head of beauty. Oh ! he cries, is this justice, 
that ti\is fair young creature should waste away, and burn 
out the oil of her life's lamp, to adorn the silken garments 
of fashion, and then perish, forgotten and unknown ? But 
still he finds that there is a voice from the opening tomb, a 
whisper from the cold marble halls of death, which tells him 
of the risen spirit, gloriously bright from all its adversity, 
radiant from the sufferings it has gone through ; as fresh 
refined gold, coming out of the fire of adversity, even by the 
crucible of labor, fashioned and purified into splendor by all 
its sighs, and all the tears it has shed. He beheld her 
precious tears all there, crystalized into pearls, and bound 
around her brow. He sees her the ministering angel to the 
suffering sisters she has left behind ; with heart capable of 
feeling the woes of humanity and of ministering to them, 
because she herself has been through the crucible of agonizing 
experience. But how of vice — where stands the criminal? 
where stands the child of the gutter and the gallows ? Why 
are these simple faces so early impressed with precocious 
vice ? Why are the hands of little children, that should 
only grasp flowers, taught to steal the fruits, which should 
only belong to later years ? Alas ! alas ! Why do the dark 
arms of the gallows rear themselves above every child of 
vice ? Why do I find that the intoxicating steam of the 
fire-water is the only breath which these sinless creatures 
are permitted to inhale ? Man of murmuring, pilgrim of 
adversity, go back to the time when the earth was young ; 



72 THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

ask thyself why the comet was not the fully-fashioned planet, 
or why the planet was not the glorious, green earth that it 
now is ? Why the ancient seas teemed with strange, un- 
fashioned monsters ? Why great sea-beaches stretched their 
desert lengths, without any human creature to rejoice upon 
them ? Why those vast, burning mountains were not the 
green hills of the nineteenth century ? Ask thyself why the 
rose of the prairie was not the rose of the garden ? why the 
daisy, through thousands and thousands of years, has been 
struggling on the mountain side to grow out of mosses and 
lichens ? Look back to the eternity of the past ; consider 
the eternity of the future, before thou dost presume to judge 
the fragment of the present. It is in the past and in the 
future that the causes and effects of the present are to be 
found. There stands the criminal — an isolated grain of 
sand, the long history of the past upon him, the long history 
of the future yet before him. Place thyself beside him, and 
then pronounce upon him. Until thou dost, he stands before 
thee as the acorn does to the tree ; he stands before thee as 
the egg does to the eagle ; he stands before thee as the 
ancient earth does to the modern ; he stands before thee as 
the planet of this earth, or the planet Yenus, or Mercury, 
do to the remote planets, Saturn and Uranus, with their 
many moons, their numerous satellites, and their glorious 
destiny, as the sun to a solar system, yet looming up before 
them. It is not in the present that thou canst afford to com- 
prehend the wise, and ever acting God. It is in contem- 
plating his greatness, in recognizing the cause, in tracing out 
the effect, that man's real destiny is elaborated. It is not in 
a portion, it is in the immensity of the whole, in viewing the 
long vistas of being, that thou shalt find that thy God doeth 
all things well. 

There is but one more part of our parable to which wc 
would invite your attention. Pilgrim of the past, thou must 
behold every art, every science grow out of the Rock of 
Ages. Thou must perceive, from the buried cities of the 
East, a spirit of civilization taking wing, and elaborating 
itself in the future. Thou must perceive, in the past times, 



THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 73 

how an unknown man gathered leaves, and the world laughed 
at him as a fool, as a dunce. Thou must perceive how one 
of the next generation also gathered leaves, and still the 
world sneered, and asked him what he would do with them. 
Thou must observe, in the next generation, leaf-gatherers 
arose, and they wrote upon the leaves. They found out the 
art of stereotyping their thoughts upon them. Generation 
after generation fled by, and still men gathered leaves, and 
still they wrote upon them ; but as thoughts grew larger, 
leaves were insufficient, and men began to gather the bark. 
As the thought grew yet larger and larger, and as the imagina- 
tion of man expanded until it filled the world, every portion 
of the world asked that it might share in man's thought. 
Then, instead of gathering leaves, men began to gather rags, 
and the world laughed at the rag-pickers ; but the next gene- 
ration wove the rags into paper, and the next generation 
wrote upon it ; the next generation grew wise upon the 
paper, and succeeding generations began to unite, with the 
paper, wood, and iron, and stone, and brass, and wheels, and 
bands, and cylinders, and at last formed out of them the 
printing press ; and ye, with the printing press, now gather 
all minds of all generations in your midst. Ye stand, men 
of this age, like one gigantic human soul, with a memory 
extending back to all times, with all its history, and tradi- 
tions, and records, and happiness, spread out before you; and 
ye are possessed of all this through the leaf-gatherers, who 
first learned to stereotype thoughts by experimenting upon 
leaves. 

Turn we from the past, and gaze we at the present, Oh 
Pilgrim ! But still the pilgrim murmurs, and cries, " I paint, 
and none purchase my painting. I make music, and the 
world heeds me not. I write books, and none will read 
them. I have not the stamp of fashion upon me. I pass 
from door to door, threadbare, and poverty-stricken, and none 
heed me. Oh, let me perish. Let me perish, or let me pass 
to my desert once again. I have tasted civilization, and I 
find it good for every one but myself; I labor in vain." 
And the man passed from civilization once again to his desert. 



74 THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

It is the last act in his drama of life. Once again there 
is nothing around him that bears the stamp of life to disturb 
him. He is glad that he is alone in the far remote solitudes 
of nature, and as he looks upon the luscious fruits, upon the 
overhanging trees, upon the glorious flowers, he murmurs, 
and cries, When the thousands, and the millions in the cities 
of civilization are starving, why is there this great waste of 
useful things ? Why are these delicious fruits and glorious 
flowers permitted to exist where there is no man to be bene- 
fited by them ? The glorious sun went down, and the golden 
and purple curtains of his midnight couch hung forth 
resplendent in the sky. Then the pilgrim looked upon the 
radiant Aurora. He beheld the magnificent banks of golden 
clouds piled up in splendid panorama, that would have 
lightened up the soul of an artist to ecstacy, and he cried, 
Why so much loveliness wasted in the desert, where there are 
none to look upon it; and as he murmured, he slept; and in 
the visions of the night he beheld, once more, the great 
ladder, seen by the transported spirit of the sleeping Patri- 
arch of old. Once again he saw the angel feet of God's 
ministers passing up and down the ladder. They descended 
until they reached the earth, and he beheld the faces of long 
ago, the forms of the buried dead, now grown radiant in 
angelic loveliness. He saw them watering the earth ; he 
beheld them cultivating the flowers ; he perceived that they 
were everywhere busied in the midst of these solitudes, 
adorning these beautiful portions of intense and lonely soli- 
tude, and he cried, " Is this the only occupation for departed 
spirits? Is this the only meed of service which they can 
render to their God ; to train flowers where there are none 
to see, to plant trees where they are none to shelter, to raise 
fruits where there are none to partake?" As he murmured, 
he beheld the dim shadows of the future spreading over the 
plain. First came the strong pioneer with his axe ; then came 
the little log hut, the work of his hands ; others flocked 
unto him. First appeared the rudimental hamlet, then the 
town, and then the city. And as the congregation of men 
all Hocked to this beautiful paradise, they found all prepared 



THE CREATOR AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 75 

for them. Flowers, and fruits, and trees, and grass, that for 
millions of ages had been silent and lonely, were now used 
for the habitations of men. And as he walked in imagina- 
tion through the future city, he beheld his own picture on 
the walls, his own statues in the galleries ; heard the chanting 
of his own music, rejoicing the hearts of future generations ; 
heard the echo of his own phrases inspiring tti£ lips of those 
who could not read them for themselves ; he beheld all the 
uses of the long buried past flashing up in the glorious light 
of the future. " God doeth all things well," he cried. 
" Silence, murmurs, silence, pilgrims of earth; if there be not 
a God, Atoms, be ye my God. Sun, Stars, Systems, ye have 
done what I could not ; ye have fashioned me ; ye shall be 
my God, if Mind has not done it. At every step of my 
pilgrimage I trace the action of calculation, order, design. 
Behind every darkness I perceive the beneficent purpose of a 
kind and loving thought, which has thus calculated, and thus 
designed in the elaboration of every earthly thing. I find 
the design outworked in light, yet more light." Falling on 
his knees before the viewless spirit, before the immense soul 
which fills all space — that is to the body of the universe as 
thy soul is to thee, the pilgrim cried, " Our Father, thou 
doest all things well." 

Spiritualists, Investigators, this is the God of Creation ; 
where he is, thou, Oh fragment ! hast but to look around thee 
to discover. Search him out. Search him through science ; 
search him through the scriptures of his works ; rear him in 
the gospel of his goodness ; trace him in the magnificence of 
his power. Know him in thy knowledge which is power, 
then shalt thou cry out with the pilgrim of old : " Though I 
cannot see thee — -though I, the fragment, can never know the 
infinite, I am, Oh God ! and therefore thou must be. 



LECTURE FOURTH 



SPIRIT -ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 



Delivered at Kingsbury Hall, Sunday Evening, Oct. 28, 1860. 



[Miss Hard inge appeared at 20 minutes before 8 o'clock, and spoke as follows :] 

To-night it is our purpose to consider that magnificent 
element of being that vitalizes your own existence — the spirit 
within you. Up to this age, the world's opinions upon this 
point have been opinions merely. Theories, oftentimes grand 
and sublime, revelations containing scintillating lights of 
truth, have been presented to humanity, descriptive of that 
most glorious essence called soul. The day of speculation 
has gone by. Living souls take their part in the game of 
life, proving their opinions in the great conflict of mortal 
existence, dazzling with their radiant brightness the eyes of 
human spectators, acting with a force that proves their 
material existence with all the attributes of human nature, 
adding ten-fold to the sublime revelations of a higher life. 
Such beings are now in your midst. The possibility of the 
existence of spirit, independent of matter, is settled forever; 
the problem is solved. The great speculation, or field of 
speculation concerning what the spirit may be, is capable of 
scientific and demonstrative evidence. We have therefore 
the rule of fact, we have the testimony of visible, moving 
witnesses, to establish every statement which we now proceed 
to make. There are certain preliminary facts which must 
be borne in mind. We shall no more open up to you the 
page of speculation, but present to you historical and living 
evidence of what is spirit. 






SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 77 

Again, knowledge is power. The knowledge which ye 
possess of yourselves will open a vast vista to the inquiring 
mind concerning the rule you may exercise upon your own 
destiny. Furthermore, we would advise all who wait 
upon these utterances this night, that what we shall present 
to you we do not desire to offer with the freshness of origi- 
nality, or wonder, or novelty, or for the sake of dazzling 
your minds. Spiritualism is no more dependent upon its test 
facts for its existence ; Spiritualism no more requires of its 
exponents a speech — a collection, to prove that a power 
stronger and mightier than the spirit possessing the brain 
itself is addressing you. The words which we have to utter 
now, belong to doctrine ; those which we are about to present 
to you, belong to the doctrine of spiritual knowledge and 
revelation. Hence we have presented the thoughts, and 
shall do so again, wherever a field is open for our utterance, 
throughout the length and breadth of this continent; the 
principles of Spiritualism, rather than the phenomena, are 
now demanded. Look not, therefore, either for novelty, for 
the mere aggregation of flowery words, nor yet for the pre- 
sentation of a thought that may not have possessed your 
brain before. What we shall now offer are the results of all 
those fragments of light which man has hitherto been attempt- 
ing to combine ; those facts which all must learn before they 
can pretend to classify them ; that problem which nothing 
but these facts can thoroughly elucidate. What is spirit? 
Whence its origin ? What is its destiny ? These will be 
the themes of the night. 

In the first . place, we find ourselves in the position to 
answer the great and transcendental problem of the nature 
and substance of spirit. And thus do we propose to classify. 
Some two centuries ago, the world believed there was nothing 
but solid and fluid, besides the imponderable, ethereal, incom- 
prehensible essence, or existence, which they termed spirit. 
Of its nature, of its substance, none could conceive, beyond 
its association with that mysterious conception which men 
term God. Within two hundred years, yet a third element 



78 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

has been added to matter — gas. "Within half a century, a 
fourth has been discovered — electricity. Solids and fluids 
are various in their manifestations ; gases are not. Very 
few are known. The imponderable air as yet divides itself 
into very few, if more than two gases. It is now even ques- 
tioned whether there be more than two primal forces which 
resolve themselves into the world of gas, viz., hydrogen and 
oxygen. Again, we find that electricity is dual in its mani- 
festations ; it attracts by attraction and repulsion only. This 
brings us, then, to the possibility of one great primal. As 
you cannot dissolve electricity, as there is no evidence that 
it is a compound, while yet it moves in only two directions, 
attraction and repulsion, we have the intelligential evidence 
at least to rest upon, that we can only search for one more 
element, and find this in the primal element which we term 
spirit — that which we this day discussed by the name God, 
which is only found by the manifestation of active power. 
This we claim to be a substance coeval with matter ; this we 
claim to be the active power, force, substance, which moves, 
sways and controls matter, and uses electricity as its tool. 
Spirit acting thus upon matter, has first divided itself into 
gas, then fluid, and finally solids. Spirit, then, we take to 
be the primal source of all things. The aggregation, or 
totality, we call God. The fragments, the details, the atoms 
of spirit, form the soul of the Alpha and Omega, as worlds, 
suns, systems, crusts of earth, and grains of sand, form the 
body of God. I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the 
last. I am he that was dead, and behold I am alive forever- 
more. This is the assertion that separates you fragments of 
spirit from the Alpha and Omega, that is the first and the 
last; Spirit being the Alpha, the Omega; you, fragments of 
spirit, arc he that liveth and was dead, and behold you shall 
live forcvermorc. 

We now ask you to follow us, whilst we trace up the first 
manifestations of spirit in this earth. We must commence 
once more by reminding you of the division between life and 
spirit. We observe that life is not spirit. We remark that 






SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 79 

man has a structure — a body, a life, and a spirit ; the body is 
the form of matter ; the life, that electricity which we claim to 
be the tool that acts upon matter ; spirit, the guiding prin- 
ciple that controls and directs it. There are innumerable 
phenomenal evidences in your own daily routine, proving the 
separation of life and spirit. We find that there are times 
when the spirit acts independent of that which you term life, 
in the condition called sleep. In visions of the night, your 
spirit is active ; your consciousness is taking cognizance of 
scenes far remote from where your body, with its throbbing 
life, is still in existence. That life is beating and visible in 
every pulse and through every vein, and yet the spirit is as 
absolutely separated from it as the consciousness of distant 
scenes is removed from the place where your body lies. In 
the state termed Clairvoyance, or clear-seeing, there is no 
action of will ; there is no thought ; there is no evidence that 
the life follows the spirit ; yet the spirit is away across the 
wide ocean ; the spirit is in the depths of the captive's dun- 
geon ; the spirit is in the cloudy regions, far off in space ; it 
is away among the shining stars, in the land of souls, in that 
remote realm where nothing of flesh and blood can enter. 
The spirit is far away, and yet the life is present. And so is 
the body ; still the silver cord is not loosened ; still the 
golden bowl is not broken. In the state of catalepsy, or 
trance, or even in the condition which you term abstraction, 
when the thought is far away, mingling with the sweet home 
scenes, the spirit does not act with the body ; still the life is 
there. The other condition, that of the corpse, the strange, 
marble state of death, the cold, stony, immovable form that 
lies so helpless and hopeless before you, is an evidence, not 
only that the thought is gone, but that the warm, beating, 
quivering life is absent also. Nevermore, nevermore shall 
the pitcher broken at the fountain, the wheel broken at the 
cistern, be united to the glorious empire of thought. The uses 
of the body are ended, and the warm, quivering life has now 
left forever. We could instance innumerable other illustra- 
tions to prove to you that the mysterious flow of life preserves 



80 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

the body in that condition as the tenement for the spirit, but 
life itself is not the thought, is not the spirit. We shall, 
however, proceed to give some other evidences of the diversity 
of the element of spirit and life, proving the fact that the life 
has an independent existence, and is one of the attributes of 
matter. We observe that your psychologists and your astro- 
nomers are now ranked with your physiologists in tracing up 
the history of the manifestation of spirit. We find, since 
science and religion have united in that great wedding, that 
the product of each is the spiritual life which we now possess. 
We find, since science demonstrates religion, and religion is 
enabled to point to the facts of science to prove herself, that 
we have a vast array of illustrations, all of which are tending 
to exalt the name of that mighty Alpha and Omega, who, 
hitherto, has been placed so remote from his works. Tracing 
this up by such lights as fragmentary science can afford, we 
find there was a time when this old earth possessed the two 
great elements of body and life of which we have spoken, 
but manifesting no other evidence of spirit but such as the 
Divine impressed upon it by his laws. At this period of the 
earth's history, we are told by geology that there could be 
no life ; there could be no spirit — none of those organic 
forms that are capable of manifesting spirit. We take the 
testimony of the ancient rocks ; we open up the monumental 
pages of the great stone-book, and there, written in hiero- 
glyphics by the finger of the Almighty himself, do we find 
that there was a time, thousands and thousands of years away 
in the remote past, when certain forms of rocks, known as 
the primary or Azoic rocks, did not embrace the element 
called carbon. We find, therefore, in order to account for 
the presence of this carbon in later formations, that we must 
believe it was disseminated in vast masses through the at- 
mosphere; in such vast accumulations that no creature, re- 
quiring the element of atmosphere to sustain its life, could 
then have inhabited the earth. In testimony to this fact, we 
search in vain for organic remains in these ancient rocks ; 
none are to be found. We have here then the standing evi- 






SPIEIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 81 

dence that whilst life everywhere prevails, spirit was not. 
The only thought we can trace in the grand sea of forms that 
are everywhere present around us, is the action of the great 
Spirit, the silent working of those viewless ministers, whom 
we suppose to be the agents, impressing his eternal thoughts 
upon matter. There must have been vast convulsions in the 
ancient seas, by which huge continents were upheaved from 
the bosom of the deep. There must have been the sweep of 
vast tempests, the bellowing of mighty winds ; there must 
have been the crash of the volcano, and the thunder of the 
falling rocks. The wild, tempestuous career of the elements 
were the only voices that hoarsely told that the Master's bid- 
ding was being done. In the midst of these mighty changes, 
trembling, shrinking fragments of spirit could have had no 
existence. Yast rocks upheaved their desolate heads to the 
murky sky ; the red flame leaping from the mouth of burning 
chambers of the fire-king, and the terrible thunder of raging 
winds, falling rocks and seething waters, were the only sounds 
that broke the awful stillness of that vast and desolate sea. 
At last the earth had a period when we find the marks of 
creeping things ; when we perceive upon the ancient rocks 
traces of creatures capable of volition, of passing from one 
place to another. From the very moment when we find the 
forms of life capable of leaving the place where God had 
planted them, and of governing their motion by their own 
will, do we find the fragments of a spiritual existence. 

We know the world is accustomed to sneer at what is 
called the development theory. We are not advocating it 
this night. We do not enter into the fragments or details of 
this science, because the world's sneer and mocking laugh 
are so very loud that they drown the low, still voice of the 
Infinite One, speaking from out of the ground like a familiar 
spirit — a spirit so near and dear to human sense, that at last 
its appeal is heard. To-night, until the whirlwind of passion 
and tempest of scientific jargon are passed by, we are con- 
tented to have our God's works in lieu of man's word, and 
again tell you that we find that the first forms thus manifested 
6 



82 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

upon the ancient rocks were ever the most simple. Permit 
us now to give you some fragmentary view of the action of 
the Almighty in matter, as preparatory to the forms which 
afterwards reared themselves up into the noble structure of 
manhood. We find that the first forms of life, then, were 
very simple. We find that the first aggregation of matter 
was a mere gelatinous mass — sea-monsters, very little more 
than accumulations of that matter that first appeared in the 
transition state between the fluid and the solid. We next 
trace up these forms to a little higher perfection, and then 
we begin to discover the rudiments of four primary forms 
that are now perfected in man. These are the heart, the 
brain, the spine and the lungs. Gradually we find each of 
these four great centres of being becoming more and more 
elaborate, until at last the spinal cord stretches out into a 
long, continuous string, and finally assumes the vertebrated 
condition. The spine of the radiata gradually expands and 
hardens until it forms a kind of column, then the final termi- 
nation of this spinal cord begins to manifest the rudiments 
of a brain, very small and very insufficient, — nothing but a 
mere gelatinous mass at first, but gradually enlarging, and 
becoming more conspicuous. Then we begin to perceive the 
centre from which flows out the warmth of vitality — the 
heart. At first it is but a mere speck — a mere central point ; 
gradually it begins to harden and band together, until at last 
it assumes the form of a solid long point. Then we begin 
to notice there is an apparatus for inhaling the atmosphere. 
You smile when you hear of atmosphere in the ancient seas. 
But know that in every drop of water, that oxygen which 
you now breathe is held in solution. The ancient seas were 
as full of oxygen as the sea is now, and the apparatus by 
which the most perfect leviathan of the deep is enabled to 
sustain its life, is so contrived as to breathe the atmosphere of 
oxygen gas held in solution in the water. These, then, are 
the four points around which the rudiments of form began to 
spring and gather. Gradually we find these elaborating 
until at last they assume a pcrfectness that enables the mon- 



SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 83 

ster to leave the deep and pass his existence partly on the 
dry land, or that condition which at first appeared. Then 
forms assume the nature, first of the amphibious beast, and 
then of the reptile. Gradually, as the wild winds sweep 
over the vast masses of heaving billows, as continents are 
upheaved, and the sun struggles through the murky atmos- 
phere, we find that the dry land increases ; vegetation begins 
to manifest itself, and with it creatures capable of subsisting 
upon land by vegetation. Then the forms become more com- 
plex and beautiful, their atoms more perfect ; they leave the 
condition of fluid life, fish, and assume the more solid form 
of bird, beast and insect. With every step in the ascending 
scale of being, these forms become more and more beautiful 
and more and more perfect — become the manifestation of 
thought. But we shall not pause in tracing up form until 
we have arrived at the last and most noble tenement, for 
which the Creator during untold ages has been preparing. 
Were you to go into the anatomical museums, even to pass 
through the museums of natural history, and spell out there 
the skeletons of ancient monsters, trace up there the ever- 
progressing rudiments of which we have spoken, as manifested 
in forms of fish, bird, insect and beast, how strange would 
appear the caricatures of humanity which everywhere pre- 
sented themselves ! How wonderful would appear the strug- 
gle which nature has everywhere manifested to perfect form ! 
How magnificent would it appear were you to step into her 
laboratory, and perceive with what care she has at once shot 
out the thousand arms of the radiated animal, and then com- 
pressed them until they formed the heavy paws of ancient 
monsters ! How she has gradually narrowed down and 
hardened the strange excrescences that appear upon the 
ancient fish, until she fashions the full and perfect form of 
the lords of the desert, and the inhabitants of caves and 
forests ! How gradually the ancient monsters became extinct^ 
and the atoms of organic animal life gave place to more per- 
fected forms, until at last, from the mere caricatures of 
manhood, the beautiful and the perfect apex himself appears 



84 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

upon the stage of creation ! The spine no more runs later- 
ally with the ground, — the sun supplying the brain by the 
spine. The head is now erect, and supplies the spine ; the 
brain drinks in direct the solar ray itself, and from it, like a 
great captain giving orders, and sending out to his legions 
each its separate place in creation, this brain supplies the 
rest of the body. The noble column is now erect ; that 
spinal cord which was once but a mere string, has grown into 
a splendid column, around which is grouped all the won- 
derful machinery of man, crowned by the great apex of brain, 
containing the divine spark of thought. The heart, too, has 
now become perfected, and performs its wonderful functions 
— the vital circulation of which we spoke to you to-day. 
A great galvanic apparatus is now planted in the lungs — no 
more the imperfect gills of the fish, no more the strange and 
rudimental apparatus which we find in so many animals ; 
but the most perfect of all the galvanic batteries for elabo- 
rating the atmosphere that ever the mind of man could con- 
ceive of ; not fashioned by man's ingenuity, for all that man 
has done, is but the imitation of what his God has modeled 
before him. The most perfect system of mechanics in all the 
hinges and levers of joint, and muscle, and bone, forms the 
moving structure of the whole system. The most marvellous 
arrangement of hydrostatics appears in the movements of all 
the fluids that permeate the body. Here is the perfected 
brain, the perfected heart, the perfected spine, and the per- 
fected lung. This is the last great work of creation, and 
here form ends. All the various endeavors of nature to 
fashion creatures that were capable of using the element of 
matter to supply their own wants, are finished in the exqui- 
site structure of the hand. All the most perfect powers of 
locomotion are combined and finished in the limbs and feet. 
In a word, whatever nature has been aiming at, all she has 
struggled for, all that for millions of years she has ex- 
perimented with, in the laboratory of matter and form, she has 
at last completed in the magnificent structure of man. Here 
form ends. 



SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 85 

Your chemists tell you that there is within you the ele- 
ments of lime, chalk, phosphorus, and various other sub- 
stances, some of which they term primaries. They tell you 
that the same elements are found in the rocks, where ancient 
monsters have deposited their remains ; and your chemists 
tell you that all the primaries of the decomposing forms of 
men, and of animals, are the same. They have used in medi- 
cine these various primaries, but not with the same effect. 
One of the observations of the nineteenth century — one of the 
daring speculations, the result of which has been to prove the 
position that we are about to take, has been this : That the 
decomposing form of man gives forth a progressive matter 
gives forth primaries as much progressed as the rose of the 
garden is progressed beyond the rose of the prairie. Aye, 
is it so. Then, with every new stratum, and every new spe- 
cies, with all the various contrivances of nature to elaborate 
higher and yet higher forms, we find that nature has been 
manipulating her atoms until at last she has succeeded in per- 
fecting the very grain of dust, of which the lowest forms of 
animals are composed, into the magnificent being called Man. 
When was man capable of assuming this sovereign place in 
creation ? Not until nature had gone through with her long 
series of experiments ; not until, by the elaboration of ages 
of change, the atoms of matter had come up to the point to 
form his most beautiful, his most perfect structure. Thus 
much of form. A word now of spirit. 

Man stands, as we have claimed, the last, the ultimate, the 
perfection of forms. What is in spirit? We may divide 
the manifestations of his spirit into five separate portions. 
First we have the sensuous ; then the affectional ; then the 
moral ; then the intellectual ; and finally the spiritual. The 
life of man manifests all these different varieties of capacity. 
We perceive in the body the first element, that is the sensu- 
ous. It has atoms to supply itself with aliment. Then 
comes the affectional, that discriminates between those who 
surround it. Then comes the moral, which in the child takes 
note of the rights of others, and manifests all the capacity to 



86 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

discriminate between self-justice, and justice to others. Then 
comes the intellectual, the craving after arts and sciences, and 
employment in the elements of matter, employment in govern- 
ing and controlling the forces of nature, the reproducing of 
forms by invention, and going forth to discover other arts and 
sciences. And finally comes the spiritual, the tendency to 
worship, the longing after the unknown, the restless prying 
into the dim mysteries of the future, and the vast realm of 
speculation drawn from the wondrous past ; the question, 
whence do I come, and whither am I bound. In man, we 
perceive the concentration of all these possibilities — all these 
elements, and we call the aggregation, mind. We look in 
vain for them in the lower kingdoms of animal life. Oh, 
Man ! what part of thy brain — that grasping, soaring mind, 
which thou dost locate in thy brain — what faculty is there, 
which nature, with equal care for spirit as for form, has not 
prepared in the lower animals before thee ? Where do you 
find in one single plane of animal existence that there is an 
absence of that you term the sensuous instinct ; the absence 
of that discrimination which enables every creature, from the 
ancient sea-monster to the soaring eagle, to discriminate 
among the forms of nature, and supply itself with the ali- 
ment most suitable to its being ? Where do we find that any 
portion of nature, even among the lowest and strangest of 
the old monsters, were destitute of the faculty of prevision ; 
were destitute of the faculty to calculate chances, and not 
only to acquire the food necessary to sustain them, but to cal- 
culate and provide for the morrow — to heap little stores 
against the storm — to prepare for the coming winter — to 
anticipate the joyous spring — to revel in the golden summer, 
and the bounteous autumn — to count, to calculate, to fore- 
cast for the winter ? Where do we find that the low- 
est manifestations of animal life in nature arc destitute of 
the capacity to discriminate among earths, seas, rocks, vegeta- 
bles, and all the various forms where it makes its habitation, 
and upon which it sustains life ? We find the aflcctional 
capacity developed in the animal world. Where do we find 



SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 87 

a single creature that ever existed, but what manifests love for 
its kind ? They are gregarious, and associate together in 
tribes and species, manifesting affection for one another. 
The love of offspring, the organ of philoprogenitiveness, as 
you call it in humanity, is as innate and as essential to the 
lowest forms of life as it is to yourselves. The love of off- 
spring indeed is so closely developed in all the forms of animal 
life, that man might well take pattern from the beasts of the 
field, and find in the character of bird, and fish, and insect, 
no less than in the lords of the forest, how the Almighty has 
associated by the sweet ties of affection every creature, how- 
ever uncouth or grotesque, one with another, chaining up in the 
magnificent links of harmony, the lowest forms to the highest 
creations of the angelic worlds. We find, again, the moral 
qualities are not deficient in the animal. It is not alone his 
creatures, that we perceive, day by day, on the prairies, in the 
plain, and in the forests, that have law and power among 
themselves. It is not alone the hunted buffalo — it is not alone 
the crow and the rook that assemble in companies with one 
another, and rule and reign by laws clearly established 
among themselves. It is not alone in the colonies of the 
uncouth and loathsome rat that we perceive that there is gov- 
ernment, order, systems of communication, but it is even in 
the ancient monsters ; in their history, we trace how every 
creature had its limits ; how all dwelt together ; how, in peace 
and harmony, tribes of the same kind inhabited certain por- 
tions of land, air, or water. In every thing that lives, there 
are these signs of morality — this justice to one another 
developed. 

There are but two elements, Oh, Man ! which you possess, 
which we shall search for further, and these are intellect 
and spirituality. Oh, there is another intellect. What 
enables the swallow and the martin to steer their way across 
the pathless wastes and the illimitable fields of atmosphere ? 
No mariner's compass is theirs ; no north, no south, no east, 
no west, save what is marked upon their little brain ; yet 
they are enabled, with each changing season, to calculate 
the approach of winter, to tell with prophetic power the 



SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 



exact length of time they must occupy, and when to depart, 
in order to reach the burning South in time to escape the 
severity of winter. Then, without chart, or pilot, or system 
of navigation, they speed their unerring way through unknown 
leagues of space, where your mariners, and your navigators 
have, through long years of painful experiment, failed to find 
their way. Oh, is there no intellect in the wondrous instinct 
of the muskrat, — that instinct which teaches it to build its 
singular habitation in the centre of the piece of water, pro- 
tecting it from the cruel and destructive propensity of its 
great enemy, man ? Is there no intellect in the little bird 
that builds with such curious variety of materials its nest, 
that adorns it with such neatness, that selects the materials 
with such care ? Intellect ! we cannot look upon one single 
form that God has fashioned, but there is some fragment of 
intellect, from the architectural beaver to the engineer mole, 
from the mathematical ant, and geometrical bee, to the gen- 
eralissimo buffalo and the navigator martin, up to those hunt- 
ing dogs that you train to do your bidding, and claim that 
you can educate them, and therefore that instinct may be 
improved into that which you term thought and reason. 
Memory they have ; affection they have, and hatred they 
have. Affection and hatred are the results of memory. 
Prophecy and forecast they have ; love and sensuality. What 
remains but spirituality ? 

What is spirituality ? Worship, worship of God, hope for 
future benefits, gratitude for past blessings, adoration for a 
power stronger than itself, fear of what may be the result of 
that power, hope for what may be its benefits. This is the 
secret of spirituality, prying into the future, and calculation 
of the past. Every element goes to make up that which you 
call spirituality. We have seen a poor dog — a strange 
creature, uncouth in form, not susceptible of any of the 
graces which you can impart, by education, to your petted 
favorites — we have seen such a creature as this, with loving, 
wistful eyes, gazing up into the face of the master, going out 
day by day to do his bidding, gathering up his sheep, and 



SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 89 

discriminating amidst strange ones, and one from another, 
keeping them in flocks, leading them home, and then, his toils 
completed, lying at the feet of his protector, and lovingly, 
tenderly, worshipfully gazing up into his face, contented if a 
single kind word or even kind glance rewarded his unselfish, 
patient labor. We have seen the dews of death descend upon 
the master ; we have heard the clock of destiny strike, and 
the dial-plate of time point to the last hour of his mortal 
existence ; then they laid him in the grave, and the artist who 
celebrated his life with a pictorial representation of the little 
green mound that covered the last, long tenement of earth, 
celebrated as well his chief mourner, his only one. By the 
side of the green mound lay the rough, shaggy companion of 
his life. Day by day strangers brought him the crust that 
sustained that poor, wasting life. At last, man, worshiping 
man, spiritual man, grateful, kind, noble man, forgot him. 
The snows of winter came fast and thick, but when they 
melted beneath the breath of spring, the gaunt form of the 
dead hound was found — a martyr to his worship. On the 
altar of the dead master's love, he had offered up a worship 
as pure and as strong as martyr ever offered to his God. Fol- 
low through, ye naturalists, the history and the possibilities 
of all the lower forms of animal life, and you will find that 
if you treat them kindly, and educate them well, and culture 
them carefully, and plant in their rough and uncouth forms 
the seeds of improvement, there is not a creature that may 
not attain to the topmost round of your splendid intellect- 
uality, of your noble mind ; spirituality, the worship of a being 
higher than yourself, the fear of his unkindness, and the hope 
of his kindness ; gratitude for the past, and hope for the 
future. 

Thus, Oh, Man ! do we find that, as the Almighty Author 
has prepared the form, the elements of matter, carefully, until 
at last they were complete in thy grand system of mechan- 
ism, so in all the fragments of thought that are manifested in 
the different forms of animal life, he has everywhere pre- 
pared the elements of spirit. Aye, of spirit. We know no 



90 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

line between instinct and spirit. Instinct ! what is it ? Is it 
memory ? Is it prophecy ? Is it the manifestation of intel- 
lect ? Is it mathematics or geometry ? If it be in all these 
things, then, do animals not possess them ? And if reason be 
any higher, where will you find it, if not in them ? There is 
one difference that we will not fail to mark ; and here it is 
that we find how the destiny of man becomes triumphant over 
all lower forms, and how he is clearly found to grasp the reins 
of sovereignty, and chain them all within his own power. It 
is this : what the animal form can do in detail, man possesses 
in full ; what the animal thought has in fragments, man pos- 
sesses in his totality. Man cannot engineer with his hand, 
as does the mole, but man, by his mighty spirit, is enabled to 
combine the little atoms of gunpowder and cause them to 
break a way for him into the heart of the mightiest mountain. 
Man, although he cannot float on the huge billows, like the 
leviathan of the deep, can call forth from its rocky bed a 
metallic structure, and sink farther and deeper than ever fish 
or leviathan sank. Man, if he cannot scale the mountain 
side, like a soaring eagle, can build himself a great iron horse, 
that will do it for him, flying over the mountain top with 
greater speed than ever eagle's mighty pinions bore him. 
Thus can man knit up all the fragments of thought that God 
has prepared, and stand a demi-god, with all the forms of 
earth committed to his vice-regal charge. 

This is spirit ; this is where it came from. Again and 
again we have told the same story, and must tell it, until 
you know, and estimate yourselves for what you are. Thou 
art indeed the flower of earthly existence. Where will you 
limit its boundless range ? No dungeons can hem it in. 
Fetter down the body with chains, and bars, and racks, and 
the free spirit will soar away to the stars. Place it in the 
Carolina rice field, with the toiling slave, and the poor and 
helpless captive shall be far away, in the dear cabin of home, 
rejoicing in the precious presence of father and mother, and 
sporting once more by the murmuring brook-side, with the 
playmates of youth. You cannot burn it; as the leaping 



SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 91 

flame is consuming the form of the martyr, his spirit shall be 
chanting hallelujahs to his God. You cannot drown it ; you 
may sink it deeper than ever plummet sounded, and the 
soaring spirit shall stand beside the navigator, and whilst 
they are searching for the lifeless remains of the broken 
tenement of clay, inspiring him to make fresh charts, and 
maps, and new systems of navigation. You may take him 
up to the block and the axe ; you may drag him to the scaf- 
fold, and strangle him on the gallows ; but the free spirit 
shall mock you with its unquenchable life — life eternal. 
You may force it to its knees, and bid it deny the great 
truths of science ; you may compel it to lie, in the face of 
rolling worlds ; you may wring from it a denial of that glo- 
rious law of gravitation, binding and harmonizing the solar 
system, which came down in the full tide of inspiration to 
the brain of a Galileo ; but he shall spring up from the atti- 
tude of the crouching slave, and shout, with the full force of 
his soaring spirit, " And still it moves ! " This is spirit 
triumphant over all fetters, breaking through all bounds, 
mighty as the winds, stronger than death, endless as eternity, 
and powerful as that God from whence it came. Can you 
limit it ? Oh ! trace back the history of the ages, and there 
do you find that one step after another of knowledge has 
been but the threshold of some great door into which the 
spirit has entered, until at last every element has yielded up 
its power, and man is lord of the lightning, and lord of the 
thunder ; he is enabled to mimic it, and to fashion it out of a 
little copper and zinc. He is king of the water ; he calls it 
up like his obedient slave, and harnesses it to the car, and 
makes it bear him with lightning speed from pole to pole. 
He is lord of earth, and all forms of matter are yielding up 
the secret of their composition and decomposition to the 
prying eye of the chemist. Talk of the arts and sciences. 
What are these ? Nothing but the thoughts of God ; nothing 
but the ideas burning and blazing in the great centre of mind 
that he has planted in the spirit of man, here cumbered with 
the soil of matter, and entombed in earth, but to blossom into 



92 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

spirit life, and to possess, one after another, as his form shall 
be able to manifest them, more and more of the attributes of 
the divine nature. Aye, spirit we take to be the divine spark, 
sown in the soil of matter. It is sown as are the seeds and 
roots by which your earth is clothed with the fair and beautiful 
flora, and all vegetable forms. As soon as your spirit becomes 
perfected in the darkness of earth ; as soon as it has gone 
through the rudimental, embryonic stages of formation, 
lo ! it breaks through the crust of earth, and blossoms in 
the realm of a better and higher land — blossoms in the 
hereafter. But mark, the blossom does not leave the root. 
The flower, the fruit, the seed, the root, the reproduction of 
ten thousand seeds, are all connected with the earthly root. 
Forever, forever, this earth shall keep its place ; one genera- 
tion passeth away, another generation cometh, but the earth 
remaineth forever. And so does the root from which the 
spirit sprung, remain connected forever with the rudimental 
plane where first it commenced its life. You may talk of the 
spirit being gone, the spirit being fled, or of spirit sleeping 
in the ground. First, ye have to chain the spirit ; first, ye 
have to detain it in the ground ; and next, ye have to show 
that there is any point in God's creation, however low, that 
is not attached, by endless links of harmony, to the heart of 
the Creator himself. Take a note of music, the sound of a 
human voice as it peals through the arches of space. You 
say it is lost. Lost ! it is never lost. Now it beats upon 
your atmosphere ; the waves of air above it are stirred, away, 
away ; higher, higher, and yet higher ; and every pulsation 
and vibration of the atmosphere conveys the same movement 
through endless realms of space ; it ascends to the stars ; it 
forms a part of the atmosphere ; it encloses other worlds, 
and still that vibration is felt forever, forever. It travels 
onwards ; it may sublimate itself to the finest possible point ; 
it may be, to you, lost in eternity ; but in eternity, the sound 
of that voice will be found vibrating forever. And so with 
every atom ; its identity is known, its destiny marked ; it ag- 
gregates itself to its fellow atom ; it is elaborated in flower, 






SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 93 

or tree, or the form of man ; but whatever it is, it holds its 
place in relation to other atoms ; and these again are grasped 
by the eternal chains of harmony, that are suspended in 
space from ten thousand rushing worlds. 

A few words concerning the destiny of spirit. You all 
believe that it lives forever. There are very few among you 
who can limit your narrow and finite gaze to the mere realm 
of matter. There is something so superb in the form of the 
living man ; there is something so utterly waste and void in 
the form of the dead; there is such a wondrous change, 
without the loss of a single particle that you can weigh, that 
you can grasp or feel ; a change so mighty — a monarch so 
great, overgrown — a shipbuilder, with all his faculty to con- 
struct great leviathans, himself wrecked, forever wrecked — 
a mother, no more a mother — a kind, pious father, toiling and 
slaving for the beings dependent upon him, lying cold, stony, 
helpless, motionless, while all are shrieking around; — there 
is something so powerful, so tremendous, in the awful view of 
the form from which the spirit has passed, that man has 
marked terror upon it — terror, because he is in ignorance of 
what change means. Every creature acknowledges that it is 
the absence of the spirit. The spirit, then, was the organ- 
ism ; the spirit was the power ; the spirit was the spring, the 
reason, and the guide of the man. We have heard the ma- 
terialist declare that man was but a machine, which only 
subsisted so long as you placed the fire, the wood, the stone, 
the water, and the wheels in proximity one with another ; 
destroy the machine, says the materialist, and you destroy 
the power. Oh, Materialist ! you do not touch it. The 
machine is but the expression of the power ; the machine is 
but the outward effect of the power, while the power is inde- 
structible. The fire will blaze, and the heat will circle 
around you ; you cannot put it out of existence, though you 
break up ten thousand machines. The elements of being are 
there forever. The form is only the vehicle for their expres- 
sion ; the real power is within. And so with the form of 
humanity ; this is not the power, this is the outward expres- 



94 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

sion. You must therefore concede that, with all your power, 
you wonderful beings ; quick, trading men of commerce ; 
you men of change and traffic ; you rulers, governors, legis- 
lators, princes of trade, and princes of men — with all your 
wonderful power to gauge the heavens, and measure the 
stars, and gather up the secrets of nature, and drag into 
light, one after another, the mysteries of the alembic, by 
which nature's occult processes are effected, are nothing more 
than spirits entombed for a brief period in a form of clay — 
a form given you as a mode — a form designed for merely 
utilitarian purposes, to enable the spirit to grow — a form 
which serves the same purpose to the grain of wheat and the 
little acorn, that it serves unto you. As the earth is neces- 
sary for their existence, so is the clay necessary for the 
elaboration of your spirit; the grain of wheat, and the 
acorn, and the root, exist before the earth comes in contact 
with them. The oak may never spring forth from the acorn 
until the acorn has sustained it with soil ; but the acorn 
exists, and is as definite as though the earth never had been. 
And so of the grain of wheat ; the waving field of corn may 
never testify to the power of prolific nature to unfold from a 
single grain, the vast field ; but that grain, with all its powers 
and all its possibilities, exists, whether there be an earth to plant 
it in, or not. And so of your spirit ; it has its origin, it has 
its eternity behind, it has its Divine Author, from whom it 
becomes separate in the forms of matter so fit for its recep- 
tion ; but when you claim that earth gave it birth, when you 
claim that matter was its author, that the atoms and grains 
were its parent, you claim that the earth found the acorn, and 
created the grain of corn. For your destiny, then, ask only 
what your spirit has become, and what it is fit for ; ask what 
it is now, builder, operative, merchant, sinner, saint — what- 
soever the capacities be that your God has permitted you to 
unfold in the mold of matter, such will be your state in the 
hereafter, in the state to which you must go. You cannot, 
if you would, annihilate yourselves. Somewhere you must 
live ; somewhere that quenchless spark must find its location : 



SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 95 

somewhere you must light up the caverns of a world lighted 
by spirit ; for there is no light until spirit gleams through the 
darkness of matter. 

It only remains for us to advert to one great teaching of 
Spiritualism ; and in this we find the real destiny of form, of 
matter and of man. This is progression. Wherever we 
turn, we find that matter has been struggling to develop 
organic life ; wherever we consider organic life, we find that 
nature has been struggling to develop man. The question 
will arise, may there not be some higher form than man ? 
May not something grander and more perfect than man, pos- 
sess the earth — beings, of which man is but the rudiment ? 
Aye, this might be so, if we did not find in spirit the next 
link in the order of nature. There is no link wanting. 
Everywhere that we look, we find order ; each species taking 
its place next to the species higher than itself. Tracing cre- 
ation downward, we find no link is wanting ; if we trace it 
upward, we may look for the same eternal chain of harmony. 
Once more we remind you, that every round of the angel 
ladder must be filled — filled with living, breathing beings. 
What is the next link to man, or do we wait for another ? 
What is that that stands beside the decaying corpse with the 
very first moment of the extinction of life ? One instant ye 
live — live a clay man ; live a moral being — the next instant 
that form, and its uses, are ended. What stands beside it ? 
For one moment at least, Oh, ye religionists, who claim that 
spirits cannot subsist in this earthly atmosphere — for one 
moment, at least, the spirit must be in the chamber of death. 
The spirit must exist, if it exist out of the form and reality, 
it must live by the side of the tenement from which it has 
escaped. There is the next link, and this it is that assures 
us that man is the last of form — that man is the object and 
purpose of this creation, and that with his being, all the end 
and aim of matter and its various combinations are complete ; 
that it is to give birth to spirit, that all the worlds of matter, 
all the aggregations of atoms which you see dancing and 
whirling around you, are but tending to the same point, 



96 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

when the divine individuality of God reproduces itself in 
the ten thousand million individualities of God's creatures. 
This being the object of creation, trace up your destiny, trace 
it up through the eternal round of progress ; trace it up to 
the better world. 

Oh, man of crime, and man of sorrow ! it is a better 
world ; to the criminal it is better, because by the very suf- 
fering which eats into his conscious spirit, by the very tor- 
ment which he carries within him ; as sure as his kingdom of 
heaven might have been there, he becomes wise ; he drinks 
the lessons of suffering ; he receives the stripes of adversity ; 
every blow that he takes, is the hammer that wields the iron 
into shape, and purifies the refined gold. It is a better 
world for the sorrowing. There is no hunger there ; no 
thirst ; no cold ; no struggle for bread. All the selfish wants 
of the body are gone. All the sensual appetites that needed 
to be fed, that compelled toil, and conflict, and cramped its 
existence by the hard grasp of labor, and crime, are ended. 
All is over now. Here the happy spirit looks out with 
radiant, rejoicing eyes — poor eyes that have wept torrents 
of tears — heaving bosom that has spent itself in sighs. All 
is over now. The glorious clairvoyance of unbounded space, 
the great mysteries of nature, and all the arcana of creation, 
are laid open to the view of the spirit. That vision which 
has hitherto been hedged in by mortal eyes is now unclouded. 
Sciences, the fragments of which were gained by long toil 
on earth, now become the elaborated and complete wisdom 
of the spirit. Intellect, which crowned you here like a 
wreath, blossoms in spirit land ; for the cause and the effect 
are all before you. But it is a better world for the saint 
and the sufferer. The sharp stones and thorns which have 
pierced their bleeding feet as they trod over the rough way 
of life ; the sorrows of those who clung to their garments, 
when the hands were powerless to alleviate — all this is over 
now. There is no distance between God's saints and his 
suffering children ; but they arc now ministering spirits, 
standing on the pinnacle of wisdom, where they read the 






SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 97 

past, present, and future ; where they see the benefits of 
adversity, and comprehend its necessity ; where they can 
understand how the wise Father schools and disciplines his 
children through these very means. It is not a sorrowing 
life for them to tread side by side with you the stony paths 
of earth, helping their fellow creatures to rise. There are 
some who tell you of a selfish heaven, where the mother 
shall quit her helpless orphans ; where the father shall no 
more be struck with grief and anguish, by the sight of the 
prodigal son ; where the kind and the generous shall no more 
have drops of blood wrung from their sympathetic hearts, 
by the sight of woe which they cannot relieve. There is no 
such heaven for the spirit of man. Heaven is the heaven of 
good ; heaven is the place where the strong hand, now 
unbound from the mask of clay, is bold to stretch itself out 
to help the fallen and raise the suffering. It is no sorrow 
for them to gaze into the faces of the pilgrims who are tread- 
ing the same path they trod ; for this is a school, the wis- 
dom, the uses, and purposes of which they comprehend. 
There is no sorrow there. The destiny of the spirit is 
eternal progress. Stand upon the highest point to which 
your imagination can climb, amid all the glories of sunlit 
skies, and rainbow arches, pointing up to higher and yet 
higher worlds of light and splendor; and doth not thy 
spirit aspire to it all ? You can aspire to nothing of which 
you have not conceived, and where did you find it except 
in imagination ? The materialist, who talks of annihilation, 
says it is the mere figment of your brain, the aspira- 
tion of your thought, stretching away up into the imaginary 
heavens. But for every aspiration there is a reality ; every 
wish is but a prophecy of what shall be, and the highest 
aspiration of which thou canst conceive will soon be realized 
and passed in the ages of eternal progression. 

Man, that is what thy spirit is ; take heed of its destiny, 

observe its origin ; know that knowledge is power ; as thou 

dost know thyself, so wilt thou die as the wise and virtuous 

Socrates died. As thy spirit is immortal, as it is destined 

7 



98 SPIRIT — ITS ORIGIN AND DESTINY. 

to tread the everlasting courts of all eternity, so it is worthy 
of all the culture thou canst give it here. 

We may not press further upon your attention the various 
gates of possibility that here unfold to the spirit whilst 
encased in form. We may not further tax your patience 
this night. What we have presented to you as the view 
of the origin and destiny of the soul, is not new to most of 
you. The records of witnesses enable us, step by step, to 
demonstrate the progress of the spirit, from matter up to the 
point where it stands, freed by the death angel, in the better 
world. We have abundant evidence in the various sciences 
and discoveries of modern times ; that you may trace up its 
future destiny, that you may know all its radiant worlds, 
comprehend the glorious brilliancy of its dazzling courts and 
sunlit skies, the revelations of the spirit circle proclaim. 
When next we address you, our thought will speak of a 
solemn and terrible word — Death ; but our thought will only 
be solemn or terrible in the word. Our thought shall soar 
above man's interpretation, to give the interpretation of God 
and nature. It is well that you should know by what hands 
your spirit is freed from this mortal coil ; it is well that you 
should know the meaning of that which you term death ; it 
is well that you should know, in connection with it, what is 
meant by sin. This will be the subject of our next address 
in this place. 

[Miss Hardinge then stated, that instead of replying to 
questions that evening, as had been proposed, she would call 
the attention of the audience to a notice of a Kansas relief 
concert, which she read, following it with a few remarks 
commendatory of the enterprise.] 



LECTURE FIFTH. 



SIN" -A.ND DE^VTH 



Mvered at Kingsbury Hall, Sunday Morning, Nor. 4, 



[Miss Harbinse appeared at the usual hour, a quarter before eleven o'clock, and proceeded :] 
" The wages of sin is death/' 

When we look over the whole mass of prose and poetry, 
literature, termed, for distinction's sake 4 sacred and profane, 
nowhere do we find embodied in human phrase, an expla- 
nation of those two tremendous problems that vex the 
world — sin and death — except in these remarkable words. 
Death, in this great thinking, analytical age — death, in this 
age when all the elements are giving up their mysteries to 
the conquering hand of wisdom — death, is the last enemy to 
be vanquished. Death is the great problem, the mighty veil, 
the huge shadow of terror, which has hung over the earth ; 
which, up to this day, appears to have achieved conquest and 
wielded dominion over humanity, which no science, no learn- 
ing, can either comprehend or diminish. If ye will consider the 
abhorrence with which the world views sin, ye will find that 
side by side with this awful problem, death, sin takes rank. 
There is not one of ye this day that is exempt from the hide- 
ous influence of this great triumphant conqueror, death. There 
has never been a time when all that is bright, and beautiful, 
and hopeful, and glad, has not met the cold, dark shadow of 
death. All your philosophy fails, all your stoicism is set at 
naught, when the beautiful and the loved lie before you in 
the marble stillness, the hideous, icy chains of death. When 



100 SIN AND DEATH. 



your little child lies dead before you, farewell philosophy. 
You may bid the aspiring young man go forth to foreign 
lands, satisfied that your dim eyes will never more look 
upon him ; you may part with that fair young bride, and see 
her embark for the unknown shore of some distant land, feel- 
ing that you will never more clasp that fond, warm heart to 
your bosom ; — you can bear all this, but to see the young, and 
strong, and beautiful, stricken down before you — no voice — no 
breath — no smile of tenderness and hope — to speak to that 
being whom you ever loved and tended, and receive no 
answer — to shriek their names to the hills until every valley 
echoes the torturing cry, and yet hear only the mocking 
response of your own voice — this is death. Dead ! dead ! 
Oh ! who has ever echoed that dreadful word, and yet cried, 
" My God, thy will, not mine, be done ?" When you see the 
bursting heart, the eye drowned in tears, the bosom heaving 
with sighs, and the voice choked with grief, the words of 
meekness and resignation fall powerless from your lips. Yes, 
death and sin are equally terrible. You all hate them. Sin 
is ever hateful. It matters not where it is, nor how it is 
done, there are but two classes of human beings in whom you 
tolerate it : either the strong, who fight their way with brute 
force into your toleration, or the rich, who can buy impunity 
from your judgment. As to every other class, sin appears so 
hateful to you, that you strangle it on the gallows, immure 
it in dungeons, scourge it, tread it beneath your feet. You 
push the Magdalene into the gutter ; you shut your doors to 
the plunderer. You cannot stop to pause upon it ; it is 
enough that they broke up, with their discord, the settled 
harmony of nature or society. Ye stone them, if not with 
the cruel law of Moses, at least ye stone them with a moral 
persecution of hard, stony hearts. This is the light in which 
death and sin are regarded. Pass over the different epochs 
in the world's history and you will find that they everywhere 
stand the same mysterious, unconquerable objects of human 
hate. To live is the great good ; to die is the last great ill 
that can befall humanity. How to stave off death, how to 



SIN AND DEATH. 101 



preserve life, is the great end and aim of human existence. 
How to crush out sin, how to drive it from your presence, is 
the next great aim. 

Is it not time that these two problems should be solved ? 
You may talk of living well ; you never will succeed — you 
never can hope to conquer any of the inharmonies that exist 
in art, in science, in social relations, or in political institu- 
tions, until you know of the inharmonies. We pronounce 
these to be sin and death. You never will know how to un- 
derstand and master sin until you know what death is. Ye 
never can make true men and women until ye know what sin is. 
Neither do we find in any of the systems of the transcendental- 
ists or physiologists, men of science, or men of mind, who ap- 
peared before the sentence which we have taken was written — 
not in the writings or thoughts of any human being do we find 
an attempt to couple these two problems together, and make 
the one solve the other. What has death to do with sin ? is 
the cry. Who among ye can say what death is, or what sin 
is ? We believe that one will solve the other. We find that 
in sin is the cause of suffering ; that suffering is at the root 
of evil and death. We know of no condition which can be 
denominated suffering which does not proceed from sin. We 
know of no sorrow but what is curable or susceptible of relief, 
save that which you term death. So we consider the solution 
of these two problems will annihilate what you term suffer- 
ing, and the solution will be found by regarding each in con- 
nection with the other. 

Here we shall then stop, and rest upon our proposition : 
that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal 
life. In order to solve this problem, we must proceed to 
analyze these two propositions ; to consider fairly all the 
reasons we are possessed of — all the evidence which human 
institutions can offer, as to what is sin. We shall find that 
death will come under the category of the same intelligence. 
We start with this proposition : sin, imperfection — not lim- 
ited to the simple inference, firmly entering into every form 
of human existence — imperfection is the result of perfection. 



102 SIN AND DEATH. 



Imperfection, or the finite, is the child of perfection and the 
infinite. And thus do we propose to resolve them. 'We find 
that there is a standard existing in man which clearly maps 
out the existence of all lower forms beneath man. It has 
frequently been asserted that man is the microcosm of all 
things ; and this assertion is perfectly true. We shall take 
the life of man, therefore, of all things in which sin forms a 
necessary part. Thus we perceive that in the existence of 
man there is a period of rudimental growth, termed infancy ; 
a period of strength and vigor, a culmination of every indi- 
vidual's existence, termed manhood ; and from this period 
there is a gradual decadence to the state termed extreme old 
age, with its sequence of death. Whether we consider the 
systems of worlds around this globe, or the constitution of 
things in which man lives, we find that this life of man repre- 
sents the course of existence in all things. We observe in 
the ten thousand eyes of God, sparkling in the midnight sky, 
that we may trace up the infancy of worlds, may follow them 
through their vigor and manhood, and their gradual transi- 
tion into old age, which elaborates them into other states and 
forms. We have remarked, again and again, the hand of 
God, visible in the magnificent spectacle presented by that 
unconsolidated vapor, drifting through the heavens, which 
we term a comet. Here we perceive the elements of nature 
gradually aggregating themselves together in the infancy of 
a new world. We trace up the babyhood of this wonderful 
existence, and we find it a nebulous star. We then point to 
it as to a Mercury or Venus, the youngest-born of the Sun. 
We then find it in the condition of your earth, a consolidated 
world, with all its lives and existences of joy and sorrow. 
From this condition we trace it to that larger growth — that 
vigor and planetary manhood which we find in those great 
globes rolling on the outer edge of the solar system — worlds 
surrounded with great belts. Passing on, we find it in old 
age, when these belts burst asunder, and roll in satelites 
around the parent mass. We descend to the earth, and find 
that this same system of progress and succession permeates 



SIN AND DEATH. 103 



the entire circle of visible forms. We trace the period of 
the infancy of the rocks, as they take form, deposited by the 
first ancient, boiling seas. Lower and lower the atoms set- 
tle and aggregate themselves, until they form a rock. By 
the upheaval of internal fires, they are sent, in vast extent, 
to the surface, in the form of continents and islands. That 
is the period of the manhood and vigor of the ancient rock. 
By a gradual process of decadence, under the influence of 
atmosphere and time, we find the rock slowly dying, until at 
last it changes utterly, and gives birth to new strata, and new 
combinations. The granite of the primeval epoch is dead in 
the limestone and chalk of after ages, and the upraised suc- 
ceeding strata of rock. Each one perishes, having had the 
same experience of aggregation from the forms of its atoms, 
— absolute life in one definite form, and old age, and death, 
and reposition, in another form. 

The same system may be traced in the vegetable world. 
Every blade of grass springs from the infancy of the soil, and 
every flower shoots forth from the rudimental state. As 
the root dies in the earth, we perceive the new life, with its 
tender infantile green, — its little stem, and its ascending 
shoot, frail and delicate, but rising, until it elaborates itself 
into the fully-formed flower or the tree — the perfect con- 
dition of vegetable life — the time of its beauty, vigor and 
manhood. Then comes the judgment day, looming up before 
the flower, with its inevitable trump of doom, and the flower, 
the tree, and the grass must die. They sink down into the 
night of old age, and perish. Thus it is with humanity, con- 
sidered by multitudes, or as individuals. So it is with your 
institutions, your villages, your cities, your nations, the works 
of your hands. They all have their rudimental existence. 
You may enter one of your great factories, and a history of 
life and death shall be observed in every one of its chambers. 
Ascend to the topmost, and there you see the produce of the 
field, the fair cotton. You may trace its life from the root, 
elaborating itself into the flower, and dying beneath the hand 
of the cotton picker. And now it appears in a new life — 



104 SIN AND DEATH. 



in the form of the bale as you find it there. Descend to the 
next chamber, and you will find the bale dead. It was in its 
infantile state when gathered. It was in its manhood when 
you saw it in the bale. Now it is in a new^orm — a long, con- 
tinuous stream, like a fair, white rope, pouring through great 
cylinders conveying it down to a lower chamber. Follow it 
on through the life of the rope. You descend and find it 
condensed into a little finer form. It is now the spirit of the 
rope. The rope is dead, and unperceived, it is a mere thread. 
Descend to the next chamber, and you find that the thread is 
dead. Its life has been wrought into a closely-woven mass, 
in the fashion of a fabric. Descend to the next chamber, and 
you find this fabric dead. It has been changed into a more 
delicate and purified form of existence. 

Descend to the lowest basement, and there you shall find 
the wheel which moves the whole machinery — the life of the 
whole — and there you will find the laughing waters, — the 
life of the wheel. A hundred years hence, the wheel will 
die, although its term of life may be longer than that of the 
cotton. In its different transition stages, it runs through the 
same process of existence. The engineer, as he gathered 
together the materials to construct the machine, was the god 
of the engine. He built it piece by piece, limb by limb, joint 
after joint, until he brought it up from the infantile state to 
the manhood of the machine. Now it is still, cold, lifeless, 
the gray moss of decay is its monumental garb ; and the 
hours of deathly stillness that surround the old worn out 
wheel, is its judgment day. 

So it is with the building you have constructed and 
fashioned. Long ago, when time was young, the particles 
of matter of which it is composed were held as dancing 
motes in the summer sunbeam, until the gentle influence of 
light absorbed and bound them into the mighty oak. Now 
they are gathered together, and you behold them in the 
strength and pride of manhood. A few years hence it will 
be crumbling until it is dead — dead as in the night of old age, 
when the clock of time shall strike its requiem. It will die 



SIN AND DEATH. 105 



and lie long a solemn wreck, like ruined Palmyra and 
perished Babylon, and all the glorious cities of the East, 
whose banners of splendor and power once waved over 
mighty and conquered Africa. You can trace those cities 
from the hut of the woodman and the cabin of the pioneer, 
through hamlet, and village, and town, and city, up to the 
mighty nation, rising in pride and power, stretching out its 
broad arms, grasping great colonies, and absorbing kingdoms. 
Trace it down the hill of time until it lies like the prostrate 
columns of Tadmor, the desolation of Ninevah, the huge relics 
of ancient India, and the everlasting monuments of still 
Egypt. Such is the fortune of all things. 

And now comes the query, wherefore this constant change 
of form in that which was so beautiful? Wherefore this 
stamp of dark decay on that which was so fair and useful ? 
It is, because it was not fair and useful enough ; because the 
forms, however beautiful and excellent of yesterday, are not 
beautiful and excellent enough for to-day — that death came 
like the liberating angel, opening the door for those forms 
that were imperfect, and therefore in a state of sin. Mark 
it well ; nature is progressive, the soul of man is progressive, 
the surrounding worlds rushing through the universe during 
endless ages, are all progressive. There is no such thing as 
rest in nature ; no peace, no let, no hindrance. By the eter- 
nal law of progress, that which is permanent and that which 
is established in form and stereotyped in shape, is not good 
enough for the coming ages. Forms cannot grow — nature is 
progressive, and nature or the. forms must die. Forms are 
like books. They are but the stereotypes of to-day, and 
must give place to others as time passes. Forms are good 
enough for to-day, but not sufficient for to-morrow. Thus it 
is that the glorious comet — the magnificent spectacle of the 
vast illumination that spreads its enormous length of fire 
through the stars, and trails its golden tresses across the 
sky, that this splendid pyrotechnic display to the universe is 
not good enough when ye consider the necessities and the 
designs of that God who asks for worlds full of breathing 



106 SIN AND DEATH. 



creatures like himself. The comet is splendid in its con- 
dition, perfect after its kind, but not perfect enough until it 
has died and passed into the solid form of a laughing young 
world, shouting for joy that it is born. And the nebulous 
stars are very beautiful after their kind ; the young worlds 
that have been thrown off from the burning sun are all beau- 
tiful, but not good enough. More light — let them die — let 
them perish. Oh, Death ! Liberty Angel ! open the gates for 
the freedom of the souls of young worlds, that they may go 
forth, first in the perfection of manhood and strength, and 
next into old age, when it will give up the ghost of its old 
form, that it may assume one more beautiful and glorious. 
The old rocks were very grand in their stately, hard, crys- 
talline mass. The rocky hills, the long sea-beaches, the vast 
sandy deserts, all speak the power of the active God ; and 
could ye gaze upon them now, and once again in thought 
contemplate the spectacle of the moving sands and the rolling 
waves, and hear the voice of the thunder and the crash of 
elemental strife, such as ye cannot now conceive, as the huge 
glacier plows its tremendous way across the primeval con- 
tinents, ye would say, " Oh ! how tame is this world, compared 
with the condition of those ancient times." But there was no 
life then ; there were no beings to gladden the heart of the 
Creator — no musical tones to whisper to him, " Our Father 






?> 



The old rocks must die. The ancient fire-kings must restrain 
their arms — the wild winds must be recalled to their cham- 
bers, and, in their place, a gentle stillness must pervade the 
earth. The solemn light of a new morning has dawned. A 
change of existence has come to the old world. It is dead, 
dead ; and fresh forms — young, green forms, and the many- 
colored eyes of ten thousand flowers, and the rejoicing heads 
of green trees — now wave bright and beautiful, where once 
only sandy deserts spread, and bare rocks reared their 
gigantic heads. With the death of the old comes the life of 
the new. These old forms have no inner power within them- 
selves to grow or to create. You must break them up, for 
they arc sinful. Perfect up to the time of their manhood, 



SIN AND DEATH. 107 



they then become sinful, if permitted to remain and cumber 
the earth when higher forms are needed. So with towns, 
cities, nations, institutions — good enough for the time, good 
enough for the babes of the world, good enough for its 
infancy, perfect after its generation, but not good and per- 
fect enough for the advanced minds of succeeding genera- 
tions. They must die ; they must perish to make room 
for something yet more beautiful. Rome, on her seven 
hills of pride, with her noble Coliseum, her towers, her 
mighty palaces, her men of wisdom, her legislation, her 
warrior strength and martial freedom, was enough for her 
day. Corinth and Athens were enough for their time, but 
not enough for after time. They had no great factories, no 
steam engines, no telegraphs, no railroads, no labor-saving 
machinery, no printing press, nothing of all that beautiful 
new life that has grown up out of the ashes of the old world. 
She has perished in the night of death for her imperfection. 
Sin is upon her ; let her pay the wages of sin, the penalty of 
death. Bid her spirit go free, to build up new institutions 
and a new civilization. Around you are the works of your 
hands ; but the machine over which you have labored so fondly 
to-day, is the machine on which in ancient times the minds of 
men labored, and oh ! how they strove, and struggled, and 
thought. With what fatherly care did they band together 
all the parts of the structure, and when the whole was com- 
plete, they gazed upon it as the Creator does upon a new 
world, exclaiming : " It is the child of my brain ; all hail to 
a new-born world of thought!" But that old machine is 
now cumbrous and useless. You look upon it with indif- 
ference or disgust. You now find the burning inspiration of 
new men suggesting higher inventions. The machine must 
die ; let it crumble into dust ; it is imperfect. The times 
ask for better machines, and that must die. The glorious 
cathedrals, the mighty pyramids, the noble towers, the glo- 
rious monuments of art, which have been upreared in ancient 
times — where are they now? Mark you the clustering ivy, 
that, like the silver of old age, consecrates the ruin by its 



108 SIN AND DEATH. 



beauty. Alas ! alas ! that beauty is but eating into its heart, 
and hastening decay. It is but the fluttering pinion of the 
angel of death, who has fastened with greedy, grasping 
fingers upon the life within. It must, it shall give way to 
younger, more useful and more beautiful forms. So your 
towers shall totter, your steeples must fall, your mighty 
cathedrals must crumble into dust, your splendid galleries of 
art shall all perish, because earth asks for more beautiful 
cathedrals, higher towers and more splendid galleries. These 
things are in the state of sin. The vast pyramids and the 
mighty ruins of Rome, with their colossal form, are but monu- 
ments of human ignorance ; they are but the evidence of an 
age of physical force ; they are the voice of history pointing 
to that from which you have sprung. The relics of past 
ages, and the imperfection of man, the evidence of sin and 
brute force, they shall perish ; and the sands of the desert 
are now whirling around and over the vanishing forms of 
buried cities. Powerful kingdoms, glorious dynasties, shall 
arise in the ruins of each, like the fabled phoenix springing 
from the ashes of the past. Thus are sin and death ever 
bound together. 

Bring it down into the moral world. See if there be any 
difference except in quality. There is no human being, from 
the lowest criminal to the highest saint, that is perfect. 
There is not a mind, however stored with the wealth of the 
past, that is intellectual enough for the wants of to-morrow. 
As you men of learning and science in the nineteenth century 
are prodigies of acquired knowledge compared with the 
ancients, so will you be children of imperfection compared 
with your descendants. As your rude predecessors were the 
rough husks, the unbound grain, the unrefined gold, the 
uncarved diamond, to you, so are you the quartz, the unworkcd 
metal, the unpolished element, to your descendants. No 
creature, however great, is in a state of perfection in com- 
parison with what shall be beyond himself. Your forms are 
finite, like the forms of those rocks and ruined cities that 
have perished ; are temporary forms, in which your spirit for 



SIN AND DEATH. 109 



a time grows, and then casts them off, as the mould elaborates 
its substance into usefulness and beauty, and then perishes. 
That form to you is useful to your spirit as a means of 
expression, as a means of trying and improving its strength. 
It is the swaddling band by which the infinite spirit goes 
forth to knowledge. Your form is the means by which you 
project yourselves into life, and acquire strength and experi- 
ence for conflict ; no matter what your state, whether yon 
call it sinful or good. Ye have no standard of good. All 
things are relative. Whatever be your state, it is not enough 
for to-morrow ; and so your forms shall perish, and the wages 
of your imperfection shall be your death. That breaks up 
your form, and allows your indestructible spirit to go forth, 
free to elaborate itself into some higher form. 

Translate the sentence we have given you in its literal 
sense, and what childish folly does it represent. The wages 
of sin is death. Death came into the world long ere the sin 
of moral beings existed. The monumental beings of the old 
rocks tell of death during millions of ages as it broke up the 
forms of myriads of creatures, compelling each race and 
generation of animal life in succession to give way for the 
next in the series. Death was in the comet, when first gath- 
ering in the heavens. Death is in the nebulous stars. It is 
in every material of which your world is formed. They 
died before they could be assimilated into what constitutes 
your world. You call the earth one — you call the primeval 
rocks one primary substance. It is a compound of the soul 
and body of the dead. It is a compound of the spirit of 
matter and the elementary atoms which floated in nebulous 
vapor. These die, they lose their individuality before they 
can become the compound you term matter, or soil. Death, 
then, was on everything that is compounded in your earth, 
long ere man came to harmonize, behold and enjoy it. The 
death of the body is only a type of change. One generation 
passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth 
remaineth forever. The spirit that animates form is inde- 
structible; it is merely the external expression that dies. 



110 SIN AND DEATH. 



The life of the form is higher than its expression, as God is 
higher than ye finite beings. As all finite beings, however, 
are the children of the infinite God, so are forms. The 
imperfect is the child of his perfection, and sin, which ye 
pronounce upon — where will ye find the standard ? The 
Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Your priests, 
proud and disdainful, when questioned, point to a book, 
where they tell ye they find the standard of sin. They will 
tell you through the lips of their lawgiver, " Thou shalt not 
steal," and point to his action to show you that you must not 
steal from the Hebrews, but it is very proper to steal from 
the Egyptians. They will tell you, moreover, " you shall do 
no murder ;" and by the very same rule by which one man is 
condemned, twelve men may undertake to strangle the one 
man for committing murder, and twelve thousand go forth to 
commit murder at their pleasure. In the one man it is a 
crime ; in the twelve men it is justice ; in the twelve thousand 
it is patriotism. [Sensation.] Thus, throughout all your 
commandments, your standard of sin is variable and imper- 
fect. Nor will your standard be true while ye rest upon 
books. Books are but the expedients of the time. The 
time was when these laws were framed for the Hebrews, and 
were adapted to them; but the morrow came ; the age passed 
away, and to the Christians these laws were no more avail- 
able, and they perished. They were in a state of sin ; death 
was pronounced upon them. The wages they gain is that 
they shall die, and give place to more useful and expedient 
standards. Still, what do ye find your standard of what is 
sinful ? Do ye not define it by a rule that is moveable in 
times and countries ? That which is murder among white 
men, is the pride and triumph of the red man. The savage, 
exulting with his scalps at his belt, represents the hero of his 
tribe, but to you he is the dark murderer. Between nation 
and nation, the standard of sin is not the same. Neither is 
it so between man and man. To the poor, ragged, starving, 
houseless wanderer, it sternly says, " Thou shalt not covet 
thy neighbor's goods, though shivering in rags, pinched with 



SIN AND DEATH. Ill 



hunger, while the winds play upon thy unhoused head, and 
unshod feet." But to the rich, reposing in luxury, to the 
active, and strong, and grasping, it says, " Thou shalt covet, 
and the more thou dost covet, the more successful thou shalt 
be ; unless thou covetest thy neighbor's goods, thou shalt 
never have the stimulus to cheat him in the large game of 
commerce. " [Sensation.] So with all your institutions ; you 
limit yourselves to form, when you narrow yourselves down 
to that which is transient, that which is made for to-day, but 
is not large enough for to-morrow. The time will come, 
when, amid decay and confusion, you shall see death pro- 
nounced upon your institutions, for they are imperfect, and 
must perish. Your standard is imperfect. There is no 
standard that is perfect, save in the mind of the Infinite, who 
is the standard unto himself. There is no law of right and 
wrong. There is no law defining sin, save that you find in 
the eternal law of God. Your sin becomes right, and your 
imperfection becomes perfection, when changed by death. 
Then they give way to higher, more gracious, and more per- 
fected forms. All hail, then, to that which ye term death. 
Trace its action, and ye find it touches nothing but sin ; that 
it leaves the good — that which is the gift of God it leaves to 
the inheritance of eternal life. Nothing which has been, 
which was beautiful or true in the past, has ever died. The 
glories of comets, and stars, and planets, and all the heavenly 
host, live forever. The knowledge of how the divine wisdom 
has elaborated light out of darkness, is still the teaching of 
every age. The glorious old rocks are written all over by 
the finger of that God who so simply and so touchingly, 
without one word spoken, has shown, in the prints of the 
ancient monsters, and in the different ascending strata of 
rocks and forms, his great law of production, decay, death, 
and reposition. There has he shown ye a gospel which sets 
your books at naught, defies your earthly systems and man- 
made words, appeals to the reason and takes the brain 
captive. Tbere is the gospel which cannot die. It is in 
such writings as these, such tokens as these, that we find it. 



112 SIN AND DEATH. 



Out of these imperfect forms, out of this vast array of the con- 
quests which death has made, ye can perceive how God has 
conserved the beautiful and the true, and handed it down 
from ago to age until it becomes the inheritance of eternal 
life, which only is his gift. 

Ye may trace it in the history of this great continent of 
yours. It was when a noble, brave set of men found imper- 
fection in their fatherland — when the laws which had been 
very good, and institutions which had been necessary for the 
preceding age, fell upon their souls like iron bolts, chaining 
down their free spirits with a burden top grievous to be borne 
longer, that they determined that either they must die to 
England, or England must die to them. They felt that the 
hour of doom had come, when their souls must be free ; when 
their God and their religion, dearer to them than all transient 
forms, must be preserved by breaking the chain of captivity 
which tyranny laid upon them ; and so they perished to their 
native land, and embarked on the vast waste of water, amid 
cold and hardship, privation and death, in loss of friends and 
home. Then, with stern, unshaken faith, through the long 
winter days, the Pilgrim Fathers ploughed the wide waste of 
ocean, until at last, in the season of storm and cold, they 
planted their weary feet in the land of the savage, with no- 
where to lay their heads, with no shelter from the wintry 
severity of a bleak climate, without homes, or friends, or wel- 
come ; a band of lonely hearts stood these children of liberty, 
few, but faithful and undaunted, cherishing a burning love for 
that liberty inherent in all men, even under monarchical sys- 
tems of government, and crying to all the world, by voice and 
example, " the soul of man must be free, and everything in 
that soul must be represented." With no assistance, with 
only the angels hovering around them, they held on their way, 
amid perils and hardships, to their lonely, distant home. 
Now, you remember all this struggle and triumph. You 
point to their efforts ; you speak of them with bared heads ; 
you bow down to the very dust as you pass the scene of their 
great labors, or the spot where their ashes lie. You tell 






SIN AND DEATH. 113 



your children. Ye tell the children tales of their virtue as 
ye sit long into the winter's night, crooning over the fire. 
When your young men go to plow the deep, or press forward 
to the struggle of life, with the names of the noble Pilgrim 
Fathers on your tongue, ye point to the scenes of their high 
deeds, and recall the story of their bright example, until your 
heart leaps into your mouth, and you bid them be like these 
noble Pilgrim Fathers, the sires of liberty. Ye do all this : 
but where is Salem's gallows ? Where is the hanging of the 
Quaker women on Boston Common ? Where are the whipping 
post, and pillory, and jail ? The fire, sword, and faggot ? The 
hatred, bigotry and detestation, that grew up between man and 
man, between brother and brother, out of Puritanism ? Where 
is all this ? Dead ! dead ! The wages of that sin has been 
death. The virtues of the Puritan Fathers live forever ; 
their vices are with their crumbling ashes, in the dust. You 
cannot remember them more. They have no permanent exist- 
ence. They were but transient ; they were but the forms in 
which their virtues were enshrined. They were narrow 
prison houses, in which their souls were bound — the chains 
of earth to their spirits — and they are scattered to the four 
winds of heaven. 

As with them, so with every soul that ever lived. This is 
the secret of hero-worship. Ye build up marble monuments, 
and work into stone the features of the mighty dead, when 
ye would exalt their names. If ye would exalt their names, 
write them on your souls. Teach your children to honor 
them, until your hearts quiver again, as ye remember the 
glorious sons of art and science. These dead warriors, these 
bygone navigators, these departed heroes, ye crowd around 
the insensate marble because ye can see the blessed form no 
more, and ye cry, Hail to the world's conquerors ! Ye remem- 
ber all of them that is memorable and noble — aye, their vir- 
tues are present, living with you. They are tangible realities. 
They are the gift of God, which is eternal life. But their 
vices all have perished. It is so even as ye pass the clay-cold 
form of the worst of criminals. He is dead now, and ye 

8 



114 SIN AND DEATH. 



speak softly as ye pronounce the name of him whom, in life, 
ye regarded with loathing. Oh ! those gentle tones with 
which you speak of a dead enemy. " Let it go ; he is dead 
now ; he can harm us no more." Why this merciful forgive- 
ness ? Ye would have hounded him down to death. Ye do 
so ; ye stand, thousands of ye, with upturned faces, looking 
on the one hapless wretch who stands on the fatal gallows ; 
and there is in this sea of human heads and upturned faces 
nothing but the deepest hatred and loathing. Not one pity- 
ing glance does he meet in the stony eyes around. The 
miserable wretch sees everywhere the reflection of his fatal 
crime. An awful moment passes. Now he is dead. Peace 
to his ashes, is the cry of every human soul. 

And why is this ? His sin is finite ; must not his punish- 
ment be so also ? Oh ! ye who advocate the eternity of pun- 
ishment for a finite sin, open the page of your Bible and read 
that the wages is paid with death. When sin is accom- 
plished, the inharmony produced is life ; the misery that fol- 
lows is death. The world revolts against sin, and pronounces 
judgment upon it. " It shall not be," is the cry of the world. 
Why is this ? Sin is the cause of all inharmony. It breaks 
up the ties of the social relations. Wherever there is dis- 
cord or suffering ; wherever nature's uniformity is broken ; 
wherever her progress is checked, and her glorious laws 
infracted ; wherever happiness is destroyed or prevented, 
there is sin. As sure as that sin exists, there is a law by 
which the consequence of this sin is to produce death. The 
sin cannot remain, nor its effects. They must perish ; they 
must die. But to the good and the true, there is no finality. 
All the art and all the science of Athens is with you to-day ; 
all its cruelty and folly arc dead. All the martial pride and 
virtue, all that was beautiful and grand in Rome and Greece, 
are with you to-day ; all their savagism, their tyranny, and 
their errors are dead. All the wondrous lore of Egypt, all 
the splendor and magnificence of India, arc witli you tc-day; 
but all their strange, fantastic systems, all their mysticisms, 
their follies, their myths, are dead, dead. It was predicted 



SIN AND DEATH. 115 



ages ago, that Babylon would fall, because she did not engraft 
within herself that gift of God which is the gift of eternal 
life — the gift of the kingdom of heaven. So with all your 
sins ; they must perish, and woe be to that man who attempts 
to stamp permanence upon sin, or to say that death is other 
than the wages of sin. But the gift of God is eternal life. 

This is our view of sin and death. Rejoice, bereaved 
mother, thy little blossoms are transplanted ; but there was 
imperfection in the little temple in which that holy spirit was 
enshrined; there was that imperfection, which presses the 
form down to death itself; and death — the kind, benevolent, 
white-robed angel — the queen of spring — the gatherer of 
flowers, came, lifting the little one to a better life ; opening 
the gate of its clay prison, and leading its little footsteps 
into the world of eternal sunshine. She has set your child 
free. She has broken up only the imperfect form, which was 
sinful, and insufficient to the spirit, which was unable to 
exchange it, which was unable to externalize it, which 
was unable to give it what the spirit demanded. Ye 
may say, we commend early death ; that we consider it a 
blessing — the glorious highway — the archway, over which 
the soul walks up to a higher life. So we do ; but remem- 
ber, that only perfection can enter through the gateway, 
when nature's purposes are fulfilled. Nature grants to 
everything a stereotyped form, for the purpose of incar- 
nating the life, and giving the spirit expression. Hence, pre- 
mature or violent death is a misfortune, for it is an infraction 
of the order of nature. But God is good, and works light 
out of man's darkness. He compensates for those violated 
laws by which man plunges two-thirds of the race into pre- 
mature death. He places little children in that exalted, 
pure condition in which angels dwell, where they live safe 
from the conflicts of sin ; but they are thus deprived of the 
strength that sin gives. Aye, it does give strength. In 
every struggle with self and sin, a fresh strength is evolved ; 
and that the little child loses. But what it loses in strength, 
it gains in purity ; and what humanity loses in purity,, from 



11G SIN AND DEATH. 



Bin, it gains in experience, and knowledge, and strength. 
Oh ! there is a law of compensation in the spheres. This is 
the strength, by which every departed spirit becomes the 
guardian to the being next to itself — by which every departed 
spirit, witli wide clairvoyant vision and extended power, is 
enabled to do more for the soul it loved on earth, than the 
bud of life that is taken away in infancy. 

This is the compensation which God, in his goodness, has 
made for the follies of man, by which he rushes on to prema- 
ture death. It is not so with the suicide ; whether he seeks 
death voluntarily, or whether he falls into its embrace by 
that moral suicide that hastens through the gates of constant 
sin, on to the penalty angel. In every condition, where man 
violates the knowledge he possesses, he sins against the 
Holy Ghost. This cannot be forgiven. The Holy Ghost is 
knowledge ; the Holy Ghost is the divine life within ; and 
that man or woman who sins against that law, must pay the 
penalty by many deaths. There is no forgiveness, no com- 
pensation for that — nothing but that suffering which is the 
death of sin. 

Bnt still this law is just, and still it is full of hope. Still 
it points to the fact, that for the criminals, as for the saints, 
there is a Father, to whom all may say, " I will arise and go 
to Thee." There is the aim to which all shall press forward 
through the gates of death, though they may be ten thousand 
or ten million. Form after form shall pass away ; sin after 
Bin breaks up and perishes, like the forms of ancient insti- 
tutions; the soul advances through pain and delay, until at 
last the free spirit stands upon the verge of the highest life, 
and approaches tin 4 throne, whereon stands the Father. 

It has been said, "There shall be no more death." If 
there be do more change, there will be annihilation. Death, 
as ye Bee it, is ended— death, as ye comprehend it, the king 
of terrors ; thai which ye tear, and teach your little children 
to dread as tin* greatest bug-bear of existence — that last 
enemy, is conquered when knowledge is obtained by man 
of what death is, the main purpose which it subserved, and 



SIN AND DEATH. 117 



the magnificent ends for which it is instituted. Then may 
we truly cry out, " Oh, death ! where is thy sting ? Oh, 
grave! where is thy victory ?" 

This evening we propose to close these addresses, by ask- 
ing your attention, whilst we offer a few suggestions on the 
subject of Hades, or the land of the dead. The dead ! 
where are they ? Oh, Atmosphere ! Air ! Sky ! Earth ! Ye 
are all full of them — full of the loving and true. Oh, human 
soul ! cherished, and strengthened, upheld and blest by 
them ; lamps to thy feet — watchmen in thy darkness, are 
these blessed spirits. Away with the word ; let it never 
more be sounded, in the life of knowledge and wisdom ; for- 
get that death was e'er arrayed in the black form of terror, 
and night, and destruction ; put on the garb of rejoicing, for 
in that name is recognized but the graduation in a higher 
college ; joyfully send forth the hallelujah of triumph when 
your children go home to the bosom of the Father — when 
the weary pilgrims of life pass through the bright archway 
to the better land. Welcome death as the liberty angel, 
that shall set the good free — that shall realize the gift of 
God — that shall break up the old, imperfect forms. Rejoice, 
and cry out with us, " There is no more death ! " 

If there be any present who desire to propound a few 
questions, we would cheerfully respond. 

[Having paused a few moments, and no person presenting 
any inquiries, the announcement of the evening lecture was 
repeated, together with the announcement, that in three 
months the" details of modern Spiritualism, its phenomena, 
art and science, would be the subject of further discourse, 
through the present medium.] 



LECTURE SIXTH 



HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 



Delivered at Kingsbury Hall, Sunday Evening, i\ov. 4, 1860. 



[Mies Hardinoe appeared, and began speaking ten minutes before eight o'clock. Hav- 
ing read a notice of a test-medium's meeting, (Ada L. Hoyt,) to take place on Thursday 
evening, she proceeded :] 

I am also required by the power that I obey, to read to 
you, as the introduction to this evening's discourse, a few 
very brief extracts from certain celebrated English writers : 

" The happiness of the elect in heaven will, in part, consist in wit- 
nessing the torments of the damned in hell. And among these, it may 
be their own children, parents, husbands, wives, and friends on earth. 
One part of the business of the blessed is to celebrate the doctrine of 
reprobation. While the decree of reprobation is eternally executing 
on the vessels of wrath, the smoke of their torment will be eternally 
ascending in view of the vessels of mercy, who, instead of taking the 
part of these miserable objects, will say, 'Amen, hallelujah, praise the 
Lord.' " — Emmons' Sermons, xvi. 

"When they (the saints,) shall see how great the misery is, from 
which God hath saved them, and how great a difference he hath made 
between their state and the state of others who were by Nature, and 
perhaps by practice, no more sinful and ill-deserving than they, it will 
rive them more a sense of the wonderfulness of God's grace to them. 
Every time they look upon the damned, it will excite in them a lively 
and admiring sense of the grace of God in making them so to differ. 
The Bight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints for- 
ever." — Id., Sermon xi. 

II The Baintfl in glory will be far more sensible how dreadful the 
wrath of God is, and will better understand how terrible the sufferings 
of the damned are, vet this will be no occasion of grief to them, bat 
rejoicing. They v ill not be Borry for the damned ; it will cause no 
uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them, but on the contrary, when they 
see this sight, it will occasion rejoicing, and excite them to joyful 
praises. " — EdvxtroW Practiced Sermons, xxii. 



HADES, THE LAND OP THE DEAD. 119 

" The Rev. Thomas Boston, an orthodox divine, in his ' Four-fold 
State,' says: 'The godly wife shall applaud the justice of the judge 
in the condemnation of her ungodly husband. The godly husband 
shall say, amen! to the damnation of her who lay in his bosom ! The 
godly parent shall say, hallelujah ! at the passing of the sentence of 
their ungodly child. And the godly child shall from his heart approve 
the damnation of his wicked parents who begot him, and the mother 
who bore him.'— p. 336. 

" The Rev. Thomas Vincent, a Calvinistic clergyman of the seven- 
teenth century, indulges in the following strain : ' This will fill them 
(the saints,) with astonishing admiration and wondering joy, when 
they see some of their near relatives going to hell ; their fathers, 
their mothers, their children, their husbands, their wives, their inti- 
mate friends, and companions, while they themselves are saved ! 
. . . . Those affections they now have for relatives out of Christ 
will cease ; and they will not have the least trouble to see them sen- 
tenced to hell, and thrust into the fiery furnace ! ' 

"The orthodox Ambrose, in his sermon on ' Doom's-day,' says: 
1 When the damned have drunken clown whole draughts of brimstone 
one day, they must do the same another day. The eye shall be tor- 
mented with the sight of devils, the ear with the hideous yellings and 
outcries of the damned in flames, the nostrils shall be smothered as it 
were with brimstone ; the tongue, the hand, the foot, and every part 
shall fry in flames ! ' 

" I quote the following from a writer in the Congregationalist. He 
says : ' We do not deny that infant damnation was once the orthodox 
doctrine of the Church. # # # # ]s^ or do we deny 
that Calvin himself believed that some infants might be non-elect, 
and perish ; nor do we deny that Calvinistic writers, since his day, 
have held and taught that the children of unbelievers and heathen, 
might be eternally lost.' It is still taught inferentially in the ' Pres- 
byterian Confession of Faith.' It reads thus : 

" 'Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by 
Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he 
pleaseth. So, also, are all other elect persons who are incapable of 
being outwardly called by the ministry of the word.' pp. 68, 69. 

" If such language means anything, the phrase, ' elect infants,'' pre- 
supposes there are non-elect infants. Dr. Jonathan Edwards says : 

" ' Reprobate infants are vipers of vengeance, which Jehovah will 
hold over hell in the tongs of his wrath, until they turn and spit venom 
in his face.' 

" And John Calvin, of Servetus memory, disposes of juvenile sin- 
ners without ceremony. He tells us : 

" ' Children bring their condemnation with them from their moth- 
er's womb, being liable to punishment, not for the sin of another, but 
for their own ; for although they have not yet produced the fruits of 
their iniquity, they have the seed inclosed in themselves ; nay, their 



120 



HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 



whole nature is, as it were, a seed of sin ; therefore it cannot but be 
odious and abominable to God.' 

11 Here follow some old orthodox stanzas, embodying the same 
doctrine : 

' There is a never-ending Hell, 

And never-dying pains, 
Where children must with demons dwell 
In darkness, fire and chains. 



' Have faith the same with endless shame, 

To all the human race ; 
For Hell is crammed with infants damned 
Without a day of grace.' — Dr. Watts." 



"And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should 
believe a lie : that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but 
had pleasure in unrighteousness/' — 2 Tliessalonians, 2:11, 12. 

" And the Scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adul- 
tery : and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this 
woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law com- 
manded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they 
said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped 
down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. 
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, 
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again 
he stooped down and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being 
convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, 
even unto the last : and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the 
midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he 
said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers 1 hath no man condemned 
thee ' She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I con- 
demn thee : go, and sin no more." — St. John, 8 :3 — 11. 

" Ami when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they 
crucified him, and the malefactors; one on the right hand, and the other on 
the left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 

And they parted his raiment, and cast lots. And the people stood 

beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved 

: let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God. And the 

Boldiera also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar, and saying, 

[f thou be the King of the dews, save thyself. And a superscription also was 

a over him, in letters df Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, Tins is the 
Kino Of mi. Jews. And one of the malefactors, which were hanged, railed 

01) him, laying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answer- 
in-, rebnked him, Baying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same 
condemnation ! And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our 

bat this man hath done nothing ami8B. And he said unto -Jesus, Lord, 

remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, 
Verily I lay unto thee, To day shah thou he with me in paradise." — St. Luke, 



HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 121 

[Here Miss Hardinge resumed her seat during*a few moments, which, were occupied by 
singing ; at the conclusion of which, she proceeded :] 

" To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." 
" And to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me." 
When this century is dead, scarcely a foot that now 
presses this mortal earth, but will be crumbling in the dust ; 
and every one of those bright spirits, those radiant souls, 
that now think and are — where will they be ? Either with 
Saul and his sons, or with Jesus in paradise ; every one of 
them will be in Hades. Is not the time come when ye should 
know whither ye are bound ? We have read ye this night 
some of those teachings which for fifteen hundred years have 
led ye onwards to the grave. We have read ye this night 
the only solution which the most civilized churches, and the 
most civilized nations of the earth offer concerning the land 
of the dead. As ye must all go there — as there is no man, 
saint or sinner — as there is scarcely a heart that now 
pulsates with life, but has throbbed with agony at the deep 
mystery of the grave ; as there is not a single human being 
that has not cried, Where, where are they gone ? where 
must I follow them? so these Christian divines, these 
watchmen on the walls of Zion, have attempted to answer 
the question : Where are they ? True, they do not all agree. 
One writes on your monumental gravestone, " Here lies ;" 
another writes, " Gone to God ;" one writes, " Here rests ;" 
and another, " Here waits until the last trump shall sound." 
But the world is not satisfied. This is shown by the presence 
of the thinking men and women that are here this night, 
waiting upon the words of the very babes and sucklings, the 
handmaidens and weak of earth, in the hope to catch some more 
hopeful light from some torch flashed by the hands of angels in 
the midst of this hideous night of darkness ; it is proven by 
your presence, thinking men and women, and the presence 
of millions who have crowded around the footsteps of your 
speaker, since, three short years ago, she listened to the voices 
of the immortals, for the first time, through the medium- 
power of the very one whom ye will hear next Thursday. 



V22 

A ye, through such babes, such weak, such simple, such common 
tilings of earth, as uninstructed women and weak children ; 
through brands such as no Christian divine would pluck from 
the burning ; through the low, tiny voices of nature's little 
ones ; through the unpremeditated speech of the frail things 
of earth, } T e seek for some higher light. God help the 
thought of this day, the minds and the souls of those who 
have been starved down to this point, if down ye are 
descending to ask for light through such means. 

Here is a representation of the Christian's interpretation 
of Hades, [pointing to the book from which she had read the 
previous extracts.] Side by side with this stands the inter- 
pretation given by the founder of that faith termed Christian. 
Two classes of sinners stand before him. These sinners once 
stood before him — these very sinners whom John Calvin, 
and Martin Luther, and their followers, have denounced, and 
consigned to the very lowest depths of Hades. We accept 
these precious ones — these little, frail lambs of love; these 
simple, tender beings whom Jesus so fondly caressed, the 
non-elect little children who pave the dreadful ways of 
that hideous kingdom of darkness, where the non-elect, in 
reprobation, endure eternal torments. We accept them. 
Here ye have a representation of what they may expect 
through the lips of Jesus. With this clue before us, we 
proceed to consider the evidences, historical as well as spir- 
itual, the revelations of the past as well as those of the 
present, concerning the Hades of these Christians, and the 
Hades to which you all must go. We examine the most 
early revelations claimed to be brought by spirits, claimed by 
the profoundest sages, and the deepest philosophers, men of 
BCienoe and men of mind, to be brought by spiritual beings. 
We find, on examining all systems of religion, that none has 
ever claimed any authorship except that of spiritual beings. 
'I'll.- evidence afforded by monumental remains, that spiritual 
communion, in all its present external, phenomenal phases, 
did exist, justifies our belief that they did commune with 
spiritual beings, during trances, and visions of the night, 



HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 123 

through the presentation of the forms of the departed in 
bliss or torment. The Hindoos fashioned this theology, this 
teaching concerning the dealings of their God with the dead. 
They were accustomed to assemble on the banks of their 
rivers, which were considered sacred, both in India and in 
Egypt, from the absence of rain, and the value attached to 
the inundations occurring from the rising of these sacred 
rivers. Here, then the judges of the dead assembled, forty- 
two in number. Witnesses were called, and the form of the 
clay-cold, broken temple was laid before them. They 
believed that, inspired by their gods, they were enabled to 
recognize the condition through which the deceased had 
passed. They examined the witnesses as to life and conduct. 
If these witnesses pronounced in favor of the actions of the 
dead, the corpse was then rowed over the river, to a place 
termed Elysium, or a place of rest. There, honorable sepul- 
ture was afforded to the remains. In this the Egyptians 
believed they presented a type of the condition of the soul 
of the departed. " He is gone to rest," they said. If, on 
the other hand, crimes were multiplied by the witnesses, 
many offenses were heaped upon the memory of the dead, 
then they committed those insensate remains to a certain 
ditch, termed Tartar, a place which abounded with fire and 
brimstone, and from which the Christians have stolen their 
fabled hell. Here, in the midst of the debris of certain 
volcanic localities, all of which poured into the same ditch, 
the deceased was considered to be in what was a type of the 
soul's condition. " His body," they said, " is being purified 
by the constant effluvia of that matter which produces fire. 
We have committed his remains, in evidence of his soul's 
condition, to the purifying action of that matter which will 
remove the stains from it." They never entertained the 
savage, hideous idea, that their God punished for the love of 
punishment. They only conceived of punishment as a means 
of reform. These ignorant heathens, these ancient barba- 
rians, entertained a conception of a God who was a father, 
and hence they supposed their God, instead of delighting in 



124 HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 

the sufferings of his prodigal children, whom he had thus 
fashioned in evil, ordained this suffering as a means of 
reform. True, they were but heathens. They had not then 
the light of Christian wisdom ; they had not the advantage 
of the religion of your Tertullians, St. Jeromes, and St. 
Augustines, and the noble Christian Fathers, who, fashioning 
the Athanasian Creed, determined to shut down the gates of 
fire and brimstone forever on human souls. This is not, 
however, the opinion of the heathens. 

They represented the various series of animal existence, 
as each one typical of certain crimes. Every animal, with 
its peculiar characteristics, was to them an evidence of the 
peculiar characteristics of criminal minds. Thus they loathed 
the swine, because they found in it the gross crime of sen- 
suality. They likened the lion and the tiger to the ferocious 
minds that thirsted for vengeance and human blood. One of 
the great teachings of their sages and philosophers, was that 
the soul, in its similarity to these animals, was compelled to 
pass into a state represented by these animals. In process 
of time, as all ideas which are too abstract or sublime for 
the vulgar mind to comprehend, become gross and sensual, the 
people were taught to believe that the souls actually trans- 
migrated into these forms. This was not the teaching of 
Zoroaster, or Buddha ; this was not the teaching of those 
priests and sages of old, who held that there was a secret, 
inner and spiritual meaning, and an outward and vulgar signifi- 
cance to their teachings. The priests instituted mysteries to 
conceal these things from the people, in order to perpetuate 
their power. The idea, however, was the same — that the 
animals represented the various conditions of criminality. 
Bat their idea also extended to fourteen spheres above earth, 
through which they conceived the souls of the blest and happy 
should pass before they arrived at that ultimate state of per- 
fection, where they entered the celestial realms of their God. 
You will recognize in this conception of the ancients every- 
where, tin- idea of progress. You will perceive that this 
i<l<-a prevailed throughout all ancient religions. Even in the 



HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 125 

savagism of the druidical forms, in the midst of the wild and 
fantastic systems of the Norsemen and Scandinavians, there 
was a world of progress in the hereafter, where the soul only- 
suffered punishment for the sake of reform ; where the pur- 
gatory of the Catholics was typified by the conditions of 
discipline through which the soul passed for the purpose of 
purification. You cannot point to one religion on the face of 
the earth, savage enough to think of destruction, except the 
systems which we have this evening quoted literally. 

We now proceed to consider what was the conception of 
the founders of your religion — the Jews — the religion of 
the Old Testament. We find there, that the Jews, who had 
been commanded to spoil the Egyptians, obeyed the command 
literally. They not only spoiled them of their ornaments, 
but they spoiled them of their religion ; they stole their 
myths, and appropriated their forms and ceremonies. Hence 
they adopted, as a portion of these ceremonies, this custom ; 
they established a valley called the Valley of Hinnom. Here 
it was the custom of the Jews, who dreaded death as the last 
great evil that could befall them, to place the bodies of male- 
factors. They carried them to this valley and subjected them 
to the action of destroying fire. They had a superstition 
that there was a worm that preyed on the body after death ; 
that this worm was contagious and would communicate itself 
to the living. Hence they established a circle of fires around 
this valley ; they called this Gehenna. They kept these fires 
constantly burning, and as they were accustomed in poetical 
phrases of allegorical imagery to liken their souls to spiritual 
forms, they likened wickedness to the worm that never dies 
and the fire that is never quenched, because this worm was 
to them the most terrible of all fears — because this fire typi- 
fied to them the disgraceful death of the malefactor. Those 
that died with the odor of sanctity, as your modern divines 
have it, were committed to stately tombs and sepulchres after 
the Egyptian fashion ; but those that were supposed to be 
guilty of the crimes abhorrent to the legislative bodies of 
the day, were thus typically reduced to the condition of hell's 



12»") HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 

torments. If you will examine the Hebrew language, and 
compare it with the Hebrew Scriptures, you will find that 
there is but one signification for their idea of Hell, or Sheol, 
as they term it, that of the pit, or grave, or darkness. The 
Jews had no knowledge of the immortality of the soul. 
There is no such teaching throughout the Old Testament, with 
the exception of the weird and unlawful testimony of the 
woman of En dor. There is no testimony in that book, which 
you place in the hands of your children as the guide to salva- 
tion, of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. "If a 
man dies, shall he live again ?" cries the wisest of men. The 
teaching throughout the Old Testament is conclusive upon 
this point, and is acknowledged to be so by the best of author- 
ities. You must accept the teaching, therefore, that the 
Hell so frequently quoted — this burning lake of brimstone, 
and fire, and torment, so often dwelt upon by the fire-loving 
teachers of modern times, means nothing more than the 
material forms of burial, which the Egyptians and Jews alike 
adopted. The Jews had no conception of fiery torment when 
Jesus came among them. There were very few of the sects 
— the Pharisees only — that accepted the teaching of the 
immortality of the soul. Until the Jews had stolen a little 
from their captors, (the Chaldeans,) there is no evidence that 
they knew of a life beyond the grave. Whence comes this 
idea of a Hell and Hell torments, then, except from the 
physical condition which we have stated as connected with 
the religions both of India and Egypt, and also the form of 
burial among the Jews. 

We now take a glance at the founders of your classical 
systems — at your masters in knowledge, at your scientific 
teachers, at your great authorities in Greece and Rome. 
There do we find that those teachers whose works you put 
into the hands of your children, those authors from whom 
you derive the chief part of your learning and wisdom, the 
wise and virtuous Socrates, the spiritual Plato, the pure- 
minded Pythagoras, the sagacious Solon, the noble Lycurgus, 
all those mighty minds that grappled with the unseen things 



HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 127 

of the past, present and future, and are now held up by you 
as examples ; those Aristotles, those Ciceros, those Demos- 
thenes, who are the established patterns of eloquence and 
philosophy, knowledge, virtue, and religion — there do we find 
that all these men possessed the same ideas of a hereafter, 
the same merciful, progressive, and reverential conceptions 
of their God and his ways. The Greeks told of a Hades — 
neither Heaven, nor yet Hell — not the realm of Pluto, nor 
the glorious ]and of light where reigned the one Supreme in 
the mountains of supernal bliss ; amid regions, a place alike 
of pain and pleasure, where the shades of the departed 
wandered hither and thither, some in penitential exercises — 
some in efforts to prepare themselves for yet higher con- 
ditions ; some heroes, demi-gods, lares, and penates, as 
household gods returning to watch over those friends and 
relatives they had left behind. There was a wise and 
beautiful custom among the early Greeks, continued by the 
Romans, of every year opening their houses, and decorating 
their dwellings with flowers, and for ten days celebrating 
festivals in honor of their departed ancestors. Then the} T 
said, " Our hearth-stone is graced with the presence of the 
spirits of the dead." Then they said, " The forms of the 
departed flock around us." Then did they claim that 
the young and the beautiful, the noble and the brave, 
the strong and the true, all returned to visit the ancestral 
dwellings, and they rejoiced exceedingly. This was the 
belief of the wisest, the truest, and the best. In Rome we 
find the same idea prevailing, with something more of the 
Egyptian darkness, from which all the mythologies of the 
ancients came. There is perpetually the idea of the land of 
Tartar ; there is the ditch Tartar, which gives rise to the 
idea of a land which the Romans termed Tartarus, in honor 
of its Egyptian origin, we presume. There it was supposed 
that instead of mourning as the shades of Greece mourned, 
there was a physical fire, by which the souls of the evil 
became purified from their criminal practices ; but whether 
we turn to Greece, Rome, Persia, India, or Egypt; whether 



128 HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 



we search the far islands of the East, or look into great 
mother Nature herself, we find everywhere a reflection of that 
assurance of Jesus, that God is our Father, and that all his 
dealings with his children must partake of the character of 
his Fatherhood ; that there is a hereafter of progress, spheres 
adapted to the deeds done in the body, a condition where 
every soul shall have a chance of reviewing the past, and 
ascending the mountains of future light until he stands upon 
the hill-top of purification. This is the system of all the 
great and all the noble minds that have ever lived, from 
Buddha down to the present day. We must not include in 
this category, the noble and the true of Christianity, for these 
will not accept a place beside a Plato and a Pythagoras. 
"Whilst they are content to dispute over the subtleties of an 
Aristotle and a Cicero — whilst they are contented to found 
all their learning upon the mighty walls and strong founda- 
tion which the brave old ancients have laid, we must not 
speak to them of their religion. Oh, no ! The God who 
fashioned them, doubtless brought the heathens into existence 
for the purpose of teaching the Christians art and science, 
but when this is accomplished, they cast them into that same 
destroying lake of brimstone to which they devote their own 
non-elect. Oh, men and women ! we speak to you with a 
sharp and bitter tongue of satire; but when the heart pauses, 
when the affectional nature but for one single instant con- 
templates scenes like these, well, well may we send up the 
pealing cry to our God : " Give us our daily bread ; give us 
daily bread this day, fresh from the hideous impurities of the 
past." 

Permit us now to review some conceptions which grow out 
of a purer and' better teaching — that of the sinless One of 
Nazareth. We have refrained from speaking of his system, 
because we have once more the voice crying in the wilderness 
and preparing the way for its renovation once again. We 
will now briefly review his testimony and teaching. Chris- 
tians follow ns through the page of your founder's teaching. 
What La the first point in it? Jesus everywhere represents 



129 

an impartial God ; he everywhere represents a God who sends 
his rain on the just and the unjust ; his sunlight to the good 
and the evil. He then tells you to be perfect as your Father 
in heaven is perfect. When you inquire how far he carries 
this teaching into after life, remember the words quoted this 
night. On the dreadful cross, in the last dark hour of agony, 
with all the accumulated horrors of the most painful death 
that ever was inflicted on the writhing form of mortality, 
groaning beneath the burning sky of this torrid land, he cries, 
" Father, forgive them." Why ? " For they know not what 
they do." Oh ! ye who plead for the destruction of these 
little ones, that, like the men and women of Ninevah of old, 
knew not their right hand from their left, go to the God of 
Jonah, and ask whether he destroyed, and whether you can 
destroy them ? If ye question this, go take up the God of 
that Jesus who represented the Father here, who represented 
the God-principle, who moved through this earth, whose 
worn and bleeding feet every where left the footprints of what 
he taught the Father was, and everywhere you will find 
mercy, compassion and charity, because men knew not what 
they did. Take the next passage which we have quoted : 
" Verily, this day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Mark 
it, this was spoken on the day of the crucifixion. Where 
was Jesus, then, on the first day ? You, Christian men and 
women, claim, he had not yet ascended to the Father, when 
seen by Mary Magdalene and others, after the third day. Ye 
do not, according to your systems, claim that Jesus had yet 
risen ; ye do not even grant ascension, until long after this 
first day. Where, then, was this paradise ? It was not 
heaven ; it could not have been hell, for he would not have 
mocked the dying penitent with the promise of a place of 
torture. Paradise must mean that which the eastern word 
itself signifies — the place of rest, the elysian fields, that mid- 
region or condition of progress, where the soul prepares for 
the future heaven. It was not the place of finality. This is 
a proof of the fact, by the very teachings of your own sys- 
tems. Jesus then promised to the dying thief some better 
9 



130 HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 

condition than the frightful state of suffering which your 
religion teaches, and that better condition was not a final one, 
because it was not heaven. Somewhere, then, there is the 
Hades of the Greeks ; the Tartarus of the Eomans ; the 
Elysian Fields of the Egyptians ; somewhere there is a mid- 
region, a condition of progress. If your New Testament be 
true, and ye question this page, turn to another. There do 
you find one of the companions of Jesus, one of his most 
trusted and intimate personal followers, telling of the time 
when Jesus went and preached to the spirits in prison. Would 
he, the kind, the merciful master, the friend of lowly, sinful 
women, and of every suffering creature, would he have given 
and preached the possibility of heaven to souls eternally con- 
signed to torment. What is the purpose of preaching, except 
to make those who listen, better? For what purpose would 
the words of the kind, the true, the Eternal One have been 
bestowed, unless for purposes of reform ? If those in prison 
were not capable of being benefited by his words, would he 
have offered them ? Oh ! by your own systems ye are 
judged ; by your own systems ye are condemned, because 
your ways are not equal. 

The teachings of such men as these — the teachings of an 
English Spurgeon, who represents to you that the worst tor- 
ments of the damned in hell consist in the contemplation of 
the joys of paradise, from which they are eternally excluded ; 
such teachings in this nineteenth century, to men and women 
who are fathers and mothers, cannot stand side by side with 
the words of Him whom they blazon on their banners, whom 
they call their founder, and before whose name every knee 
must bow low. Christ and Christianity differ in their teach- 
tngof the hereafter. We take up the simple words of Jesus ; 
if they arc not represented truly, you had better revise your 
Bible : if they are, we find here sufficient evidence not only 
of the gentle, loving, and protecting character of the Father, 
bat we find a distinct and definite declaration of what is the 
Btate of the bou] in the hereafter. We find here conclusive 
that that Btate is not a final one. 



HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 131 

This brings us to the revelations of modern Spiritualism. 
What right have we to quote them as authority ? There are 
no gospels in the name of the spirits. There are no creeds, 
nor testaments, nor apostle's sanction. Oh no ; those who 
send out spiritual literature to the world, put forth but mere 
ephemera ; that which is placed before the world as a spirit- 
ualistic truth to-day, and which is sufficient for to-day, will 
not be sufficient for to-morrow. This lies at the very foun- 
dation of all spiritual revelation. It seems impossible that 
two or three can gather together for the simple purpose of 
recording an opinion shared in by all, and the world sneers 
at the spiritualists for their want of organization. The chris- 
tian world — the christian organ, writes : The spiritualists 
have not unity enough amongst themselves even to build a 
barn. The christian journals are right; the spiritualists have 
too much spirit. Aye, that is the point, too much spirit ; 
for the spirits have determined that they shall know what 
they write, before they presume to give it forth as authority. 
They shall no more write in haste, all men are liars ; they 
shall take their time to think about it, and prove it, before 
they write it ; and therefore you cannot find that there are 
two spiritualists who are yet in a position to agree together 
sufficiently upon that which they have received, to write it 
down, and stereotype it as truth, but there are certain points 
upon which the whole faith of the spiritual communion 
hangs, and this is the knowledge of the hereafter. At this 
moment, were these walls to grow vivid to your eyes with 
the glorious, radiant forms that are ascending and descending 
around you ; were this air to be made thick with the myriads 
peopling it, who are now attracted hither by ties of sympa- 
thy, and kindness, standing by your side, or hovering above 
your heads, of what value would it be to look upon them ? 
Of what value would it be to your life-practice, to your 
deeds, your purposes, and your conduct hereafter, to gaze on 
the speechless forms of these living dead? They would be 
but Ezekiel's valley of dry bones, with the skin, the flesh, 
the sinews, , upon them. They would be nothing but 



132 HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 

statuesque men, risen up again. It is when you call the four 
winds of heaven, and put the breath in them, and make 
them open their marble lips, and prophesy, and tell you of 
the hereafter, it is then that the spirits become a living army 
of exceeding great strength. It is not in the revelation that 
the spirits bring, or the news they have to offer, that all the 
gist of Spiritualism is to be found. And in this view, no two 
spiritualists can agree as to what is best to be done by way 
of hammering the chains of authority tight around the 
necks of one another ; but they can agree in what their 
fathers and mothers, their brothers and sisters, the friends 
whom they loved and trusted on earth, those who never 
deceived them, and those whose interest it is to tell them the 
truth — they can agree upon what these spirits tell them. 
There is but one tale to tell, and that, not in three thousand 
different versions, after the manner of sectarian systems ; 
they tell it simply, because they are in the living experience 
of that which they tell. They all give one answer to the 
question, where do the dead find rest ? " We are happy, or 
we are miserable, in precise proportion to what we have done 
on earth, but we live." Life is action ; life demands sub- 
jects for action. Subjects must be either above, or beneath, 
those who act. If they are above those w r ho act, then do 
the spirits themselves become the subjects of higher beings 
than themselves. If they are below the spirits, then they 
are yourselves, for who but yourselves arc below, or next to 
the spirits? In communion with you, therefore, in action 
with you, and those about yourselves, their lives arc spent. 
What do they bring, and what is the purpose of their coming, 
and what tin 1 connection of their life-practice with you ? To 
warn you how to act ; to bind up the broken hearts of those 
bereaved mourners, who know not where the precious angels 
of the household are gone ; to warn you of your own fate ; to 
point the way with index finger to the better condition of a 
higher life; to bring you fragments of new sciences. And 
think you that all those blessings, all those good deeds, that 
this lifeof ministering, shall not avail to elevate, the condition 



133 

of those who thus act towards you ? Can they remain sta- 
tionary ? With the very worst among them, if they come to 
earth to teach the friend they have left behind, to stretch out 
the hand of warning and instruction to those who need it — will 
not this procure for the very worst among them some immu- 
nity ? Is there nothing in this constant work of ministering 
which shall profit the souls who are performing it, or do they 
perform it as one vast, barren round of simple duty ? Who 
asks the spirits to come ? Who commands the spirits to come ? 
What brings them ? Love for you ; tender, burning affection 
for those they have left behind. If they have carried with 
them that one impulse of affection, which thus permits them 
to return and seek your good, how can you suppose that their 
life is a stationary one ? Oh, look upon the world's millions ! 
Gaze only on the fragments of beings who are trembling here 
this night, and ask whether any condition of finality will 
satisfy the anxious minds that are now assembled. Ask 
whether your Almighty Father has bestowed upon you the 
thousand rainbow hues of different minds, different intellects, 
different faculties, different energies, different propensities, 
only to pass away one dull, vast routine of finality ? What 
you are fit for, what you love best, where your attractions 
are centred — these will determine the state of your here- 
after ; these will be a part of the Hades in which you will 
dwell. 

There is another question which we propose to consider — 
a question often put, prompted by the great variety of opin- 
ions that are constantly offered at the spirit circle. Where 
is this Hades ? Where this mid-region of the dead ? For 
what object, and by what means can they come to earth ? 
Some tell you one story, and some another. In view of the 
contrariety of opinions that prevail upon this point, let us 
offer you one illustration ; and we will find that the cause is 
one, though the effects are many. Twelve men depart for a 
distant land, and when they return, you receive the report of 
each. But what a strange diversity of opinion presents 
itself! The poet tells you of nothing but radiant skies and 



134 HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 

glorious landscapes ; the trader only speaks to you of the 
affairs of a trading community ; he knows not of skies and 
landscapes, bubbling streams and murmuring brooks. So the 
artist, the painter, the musician, the trader, the saint, and the 
man of sin, all tell you of that which their own peculiar pro- 
pensities induced them to observe. The saint will tell you 
of the churches, and the sinner will tell you of the haunts of 
vice ; until at last you can find not one of the twelve who will 
agree with the rest, unless you step behind the effects to the 
cause, and find that every mind represents only that which 
the mind is capable of comprehending. You complain when 
you sit at the spirit circle, that the spirits are not agreed as 
to whether the domestic favorites, the fluttering bird and the 
faithful hound, are there. One tells you that he sees neither ; 
he beholds only supernal seas, too glorious to translate into 
human language. Another tells you of houses, and lands, 
and animals, and every favorite with which you rejoice on 
earth. One tells you of sins, of vices and debauchery ; and 
another tells you of those radiant homes, so blissful that your 
very soul goes forth in aspiration for the bright morning land. 
How shall you reconcile these contrarieties ? Simply by re- 
ferring them to the capacities which interpret them to the 
spirit land. If God is not only a Father, but a wise Father, 
he has placed you here in the nursery of souls, in the rudi- 
mental school-house of being, to take you out of it in good 
time, and place you in a condition for which you are not yet 
adapted. He has not stored up your minds with gifts and 
faculties and energies, merely to be wasted on a few fleeting 
moments of life, and then to be quenched forever. Every 
faculty will find its elaboration in spirit land. Oh! there 
are glorious temples of music, and poetry, and painting, and 
science; there arc harps formed of the heart-strings of hu- 
manity, <>n which the bright fingers of the immortals play, 
until the music echoes back into every human soul, making 
them nil harmonious. There arc schools of design, of archi- 
tecture, of buildings, of machines, of new inventions, of the 
beneficent and useful arts, the truths of which, time after 



135 

time, the poet, painter, artist, or musician, gathers up in his 
lonely study, as it comes filtered down through angel hands, 
until at last the cup is let down to the very lips of the mortal 
drinker, and in his own spirit he first conceives and shapes, 
and then elaborates and bodies it forth into matter. Where 
do these thoughts come from, if the types are not all in the 
eternal mind ? If the great archetypes are not there, then 
men and spirits are creators, and we have yet to discover 
this fact. Oh ! somewhere, everywhere, in the divine mind 
are all the possibilities of all things, and it only remains for 
the exalted spirit to elevate man into the wisdom sphere to 
drink of this fountain of inspiration, and bring it down, clear 
and pure, to the sons of earth. Aye, every fragment of sci- 
ence that here you learn, is one of the steps on which you 
shall ascend to the great culmination of perfected sciences in 
the better life ; and every kindly affection that you here 
cherish, shall find its paradise and its realization in the glori- 
ous spheres of harmony where all is love. Oh ! they tell you 
of a cold and cheerless heaven, where the saints in bliss can 
look down and enjoy the misery of those they have left be- 
hind. Tell it not to fathers, speak not of it to mothers. 
Ask if there is any paradise for them so precious as the little, 
low-roofed cabin, the humble hut, the poor, shabby room, 
where, in its cradle, the little one lies with its calm slumbers, 
watched over by the tender, patient, maternal eye, from long, 
weary night until morning, and from weary morning until 
night again, never satisfied until the little helpless being can 
run alone. Oh, this mother's love ! this father's care ! the 
one great redeeming point in the worst of human nature. 
Crush this out, and what do you leave to go to heaven ? 
What do you leave to go to the better land with ? All this 
must find its extension and elaboration in the better land. 
Aye, and there are systems of commerce there, too. There 
is a great bank in spirit land, in which every creature may 
invest ; a bank, too, which ever honors its drafts. Not one 
is ever presented there, that does not receive its due with 
interest ; the only coin that is paid out, is the interest upon 



136 HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 

kindness; the only wealth that is there dispensed, is the 
wealth which the soul of love has laid up in the storehouse 
of good deeds. And there is poverty in spirit land — there 
is beggary there, starvation and want, and, alas! the want is 
the want of human love, and the beggary is for those attri- 
butes of kindness which man has failed to plant in kind deeds 
to his neighbor. Oh ! there are misers in spirit land. There 
are men of yellow souls, that have hedged themselves up 
within a wall of gold, and they find that this gold grows into 
prison bars in spirit land. There are dungeons there, self- 
made dungeons, in which man has incarcerated himself by 
his own narrow, selfish purposes ; self is the chain, and self 
is the prison bar, and the love of self, with all its columns, 
branching out into sensuality, avarice, or prodigality, — these 
are the cold and the darkness — these the worms that cannot 
die — these the fires that are not quenched. Such are the 
different conditions of spirit land, and over all, from the low- 
est to "the highest, rides the triumphant car of progress, 
sounds the angel trumpet, Light, more light ; and above all 
is the cry of echoing worlds, Come up higher, come up 
higher. 

This is the central doctrine of modern Spiritualism. This 
is the central doctrine of the One of Nazareth. This is the 
signification of the teaching of the ancient Hades. This is 
the meaning of those various doctrines and contrarieties 
which the ancients entertained, and which, by analogy, they 
attempted to represent by the transmigration of souls; it is 
the Bool's passage from one state to another. There is a 
hiatus occurring in the world's history in the last fifteen 
hundred years. To restore once again the revelation of the 
Most High; to bringdown to earth the true knowledge which 
will promote and excite good deeds, noble acts, kind feelings 
and high thonghts among you ; to lead you to work from the 
cradle to tin 1 -rave, having in view throughout life this 
mid-region, this spirit land, where each one's sphere is 
determined by his past acts and deeds; — this is the true 
mission of modern Spiritualism. It is not to do the work for 



137 

you, for none can practice for you but yourselves. Spirits 
are not creators, and can neither make you good or bad. 
They cannot put into your hand or heart what is not there ; 
they can only externalize that which exists, before unseen, 
and they offer you the very best prompting to a better, a 
truer, and a more harmonious life, by opening the gates and 
showing where dwell the Dead. 

[The speaker here paused a few moments, and then 
proceeded.] 

During the last three years many millions of human ears 
have listened to the tones of your speaker's voice. God 
alone can decide whether those tones have urged human 
souls deeper down in perdition, or whether they have raised 
them up. They have dried the tears from many, many eyes, 
bound up the wounds of many a bleeding heart ; and all the 
light and all the knowledge, or all the evil and darkness, of 
which these lips have been the fountain, have proceeded from 
the sound of those raps. 

[Here several raps were distinctly audible to every one in 
the hall.] 

Four years ago the tones of the immortals now sounding 
in your ears, broke for the first time on the astonished ^ ears 
of a stranger in your land. Every art, every science, was 
ransacked, to find out their meaning, and still they pointed 
to the living dead ; still they sounded from Hades ; still they 
spoke the language of suffering souls — some in bitter cold 
and miserable darkness, crying out for this human hand to 
help them ; some in rejoicing and triumph ; some in sweet 
bowers, and some in blissful homes ; some in noble schools 
of science ; some from master minds, long, long passed away, 
but still occupied in the beneficent task of elevating earth's 
millions to their own standpoint. That capacity of light 
and darkness, good and evil, the immortals came and sounded 
through these light taps. 

Oh, friends ! you must forgive the egotism of these remarks ; 
they come to you from the welling soul of that love which 
desires that every human creature should be as happy as the 



138 HADES, THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 

true spiritualist is happy. Cold and hungry, suffering from 
and adversity, the world's scorn and the world's anger, 
you may be ; but the world die for you, and it may point in vain 
when your risen spirit is in that brighter part of Hades to 
which it has ascended, from the knowledge of where it was 
going, and how it would best obtain the highest place in the 
kingdom by good works and kind deeds. 
Oh ! bless the precious raps. 

[Here the rapping previously alluded to, was repeated.] 
Long may they sound on earth, to warn pilgrims of those 
dark and fatal systems which would drag them down to the 
cold, inanimate and dead doctrines, and the dread, sense- 
less fears from which so many have revolted, to the still 
colder atheism that grows out of disgust for systems not 
taught by Jesus, nor justified in nature. We commend these 
sounds to you ; and until ye have fully discovered what they 
are, until ye are able, from knowledge, to pronounce upon 
them, low as they may sound, and insignificant as they may 
seem, they are the trump that is calling the nations of the 
earth to its great millenium. 



APPENDIX 



OUTLINE OF A PLAN 



SELF-SUSTAINING INSTITUTION 



HOMELESS AND OUTCAST FEMALES, 



IN WHICH THEY CAN BE EMPLOYED AND INSTRUCTED IN A 



PROGRESSIVE SYSTEM OF HORTICULTURE. 



BY EMMA HARDINGE. 



This Institution is designed for the benefit of females, who, by mis- 
fortune or loss of character, are without homes, friends, protection, or 
means of sustenance. The design contemplated is a provision for the 
present needs and future usefulness of the utterly destitute, irrespective 
of character or station, in the hope of rescuing from temptation or 
present sin, all who seem compelled to starve, or resort to the streets 
for bread. 

THE SPECIAL DESIGNS ARE, 

First, To restore self-respect and a place in life to the fallen, a home 
to the destitute, employment and an available means of subsistence to 
the industrious. 

Secondly, To remove friendless or outcast women from the tempta- 
tion to sin for bread, until they can honorably provide for themselves ; 
and, while it is claimed, some special effort should be made in behalf 
of the utterly fallen sisters of humanity, who have too long been passed 
by, or devoted to penitential or impracticable systems of reform, leaving 
them with the stamp of that degradation which precludes their re-en- 
trance into the arena of honest labor ; it is by no means proposed to 
render vice a necessary qualification for admission— rprevention and 
timely succor, no less than cure, being the aim proposed. 



140 APPENDIX 



Thirdly, In order to remove them from the struggle of ordinary 
competition, and qualify them with a specialty for superior merit, it is 
proposed to instruct them in the culture of flowers, fruits, and vegeta- 
bles, upon the most matured scientific knowledge of the subject, with 
the design of aiding in sustaining the Institution by the sale of its 
products, and advancing the character of its members to such superior 
use and excellence, as will create a respectful demand for their services. 

DISPOSITION OF TIME, AND MODE OF INSTRUCTION. 

It is proposed to cultivate the lands of the Institution as exclusively 
as possible by the industry of its members; to hire qualified instructors 
and assistants during the first period of organization, until some members 
shall have advanced to the capacity of teachers ; to give instruction in 
the theory and the practice of horticulture ; allot to each of the mem- 
bers, in turn, exercises in the routine of domestic duties, under a quali- 
fied matron \ to set apart stated hours each day for educational improve- 
ment, labor, repose, recreation, and meditation ; to consult the best 
systems of horticulture, chemistry, and kindred sciences, with a view 
of developing yet undiscovered resources in the art, and advancing 
horticulture to a degree of perfection not yet attained ; to stimulate 
moral, intellectual and physical effort by graduated degrees, and such 
rewards for superior excellence in the members, as the funds of the 
Institute will allow ; and to hold in prospective the formation of a 
horticultural school for females, not connected with the Institution. 

DISCIPLINE. 

Proposed, That the only discipline used shall be order, cleanliness, 
temperance, industry, and strict abstinence from stimulating drinks, and 
harsh language ; the encouragement, by precept and example, of intel 
lectual emulation, and a universal spirit of sisterly equality, mutual 
forbearance and charity \ that the aim of every member shall be to live 
only for a progressive future ; that each day shall begin and end with 
music and reading of an elevating character, and that with every setting 
sun, eaeli member shall lie exhorted to forget and forgive each other the 
trespasses of the day, making present duties and future aims the only 
theme of conversation. 

LOCALITY, GROUNDS, BUILDINGS, ETC. 
Proposed, To purchase a suitable piece of ground in such a locality 

a- may hereaftei Be determined ; to erect thereon a building capable of 
accommodating «> I!( . hundred persons, with a view to provide for increase 
of members with increase of funds ; to carry on horticulture in all its 



APPENDIX. 141 



branches, both for the instruction and maintenance of its members, and 
to select the locality in the neighborhood of a large town and railway, 
with a view of facilitating a ready sale for produce. 

MODE OF RAISING FUNDS, ETC. 

It is proposed to raise the funds necessary for the purchase of ground, 
erection of buildings, laying in of stock, and support of the Institution, 
for the first, necessarily unproductive year or years, by donations, sub- 
scriptions, and collections, through individuals, societies, or public meet- 
ings convened for that purpose, commencing the work of organization, 
building, etc., as soon as a sufficient sum is collected to justify action. 

IMMEDIATE ACTION. 

All humanitary persons are hereby solicited to forward such sums 
as they can contribute towards this object, to the Trustees, who will 
acknowledge the receipt of the same. The attention of clergymen is 
especially requested to this movement, and it is confidently hoped they 
will, by appeals to their congregations, and personal influence, aid this 
great humanitary work. Builders, horticulturists, financiers, etc., are 
solicited to aid it by suggestion and advice ; and every true-hearted 
man and woman is reminded that this is the world's movement, insti- 
tuted for the relief of the most hapless and helpless of its ranks ; pro- 
posing not only progressive action in a universally useful science, but 
to rescue many a fair and gifted victim from that despair and heart- 
agony which too often leads to starvation, a life of degradation, or an 
untimely death. The design contemplates no limit within the bounds 
of party, place, section or sect, and therefore claims from all humanity 
a humanitarian response. 

The authoress of this plan proposes, as her share of the work, To 
qualify herself to become a teacher and co-worker with the members of 
the Institution in the theory and practice of horticulture ; and in her 
present occupation as a public lecturer, to solicit subscriptions, and 
give her services as a lecturer in every town she visits, for the purpose 
of raising funds ; handing over these sums to the Trustees ; in a word, 
devoting time, talents and energies, to the preliminary work, and hold- 
ing herself ready, at such time as the organization shall be completed, 
to become the strengthener and friend of the desolate ones for whom 
this refuge is designed. She proposes to bring an untarnished name, 
an example of resolute industry, purity of life, and singleness of pur- 
pose, to this work, and by standing amongst the fearful and falling, with 
outstretched arms, strong purposes, and loving heart, she hopes to 



142 



APPENDIX 



restore self-respect to the fallen, courage to the despairing, and faith in 
a noble and progressing future to all. 

It is resolved to appoint Trustees in the different cities of the Union, 
when a sufficient interest is felt to aid this work ; such Trustees to hold 
the funds collected, receive subscriptions and donations, and aid the 
movement in every practical way, until there shall be a sufficient amount 
collected to commence the enterprise, when the authoress of this plan 
will call in those sums, and by the aid of suitable persons organized 
into a general committee of action, enter upon the purchase of lands, 
buildings, etc. 

It is resolved that the members of the General Committee shall con- 
sist of donors of $100, and upwards ; also, that the donation of $1,000 
and upwards, shall constitute the right of Direction, within limits to be 
hereafter decided on. Temporary Direction vested in the hands of 
the Trustees for the City of Philadelphia, who have contributed and 
retain the sum of $500. 

Trustees for Philadelphia — Louis Belrose, 807 Chestnut street; 
Isaac Rhen, 917 Sansom street; Henry T. Child, M.D., 510 Arch 
street. 

Trustees for Providence — Hon. John M. Bartlett, Secretary of 
State for R. I., Secretary's Office, Court House; Mrs. Wm. Chase, 
Pleasant Valley ; T. Searle, Esq., Ins. Agent, 7 Weybosset street. 

Trustees for Portland — J. C. Woodman, Esq. ; R. I. Robison; 
M. A. Blanciiard ; N. A. Foster. 

Russel Green; Thomas Richmond; 



Trustees for Chicago 
John Gage. 



Trustees for Boston, New York, and other cities, will be appointed 
from time to time. 



Buj Statistics, Counsel, Donations, or aid in any direction. 

lit in, either to the Trustees, as above, or to 

EMMA HARDINGE, 

8 Fourth Avenue, New Vork. 

All donations will be acknowledged in the local papers, if desired. 



APPENDIX. 143 



MISS ADA L. HOYT'S CIRCLES, 

FOR 

SPIRIT MANIFESTATIONS, 

AND 

COMMUNICATIONS WITH DEPARTED FRIENDS. 



Miss Hoyt, one of the best test Mediums in the United States, is 
at present located in Chicago, 111., where all persons who are interested 
in investigating these phenomena of holding intercourse with their friends 
and relatives, who have departed this life, can now have an opportunity 
to test the merits of conversing with the " dead." 

Miss Hoyt has given public Seances at Kingsbury Hall, since her 
arrival in this city. Hon. John Wentworth, the Mayor of Chicago, 
presided over one of the meetings ; and he held a lengthy conversation 
with various friends, and several of the ex-Mayors, who are in the 
spirit land. She wrote or rapped out responses to questions that were 
propounded to the spirits, by the audience, with astonishing rapidity 
and correctness. The audience acknowledged that communicating 
with those who have left the material form, is a fixed fact. 

Our spirit friends are ever guarding and guiding us through this 
terrestrial life ; and are endeavoring to impress upon our minds, that 
there is a happier and a better life beyond the grave. 

[Miss Ada L. Hoyt will give private sittings every day, (Sundays 
excepted,) from 9 A. M. to 6 P. M., at No. 24 Desplaines street, 
(a few doors south of Randolph,) Chicago, 111.] 



BANNER OF LIGHT ; A Weekly Journal of General Intelligence 
and Enterprise — a leading Organ of the Spiritualists, containing 
Reports of Lectures, etc. Conducted by Messrs. Berry, Colby & 
Co., No. 3^ Brattle street, Boston, Mass. 

HERALD OF PROGRESS; A Weekly Journal, devoted to the 
Discovery and Application of Truth. 

Seize upon Truth, wherever found, 
On Christian or on Heathen ground. 

Andrew Jackson Davis, Editor, No. 274 Canal street, N. Y. 



SPIRITUAL CLARION ; A Journal of Distinctive, Harmonic, 
and Eclectic Spiritualism. Uriah Clark, Editor, Auburn, 
N. Y. 



144 APPENDIX 






SPIRITUAL TRUTHS. 



OUTSIDE AND INSIDE RELIGION. 

Nothing is heartily believed that is said by others, unless it find a response 
from the soul-consciousness of the hearer. 

A truth that relates to spiritual things can never be driven into a man from 
without. A capacity is developed in man for spiritual truths, or, what seems 
almost the same thing, truth is developed within and comes out of a man, as a 
rosebud unfolds its leaves and fragrance from within, outward. Unseen spir- 
itual streams of power flow into the soul, and the soul, from its own God-given 
nature, produces its own truths, as the bee produces honey by its own God- 
given nature. 

No spiritual truth can be forced upon the soul by external teachings, no more 
than the fragrance of another flower can be forced into a rose, and substituted 
for its own peculiar fragrance. 

There is no such thing as spiritual culture coming from the teachings of 
another. 

A soul conviction is the product of natural growth. A soul conviction is a 
soul truth — is a part of the soul. We hear a thought uttered by another; our 
souls respond, " How beautiful, how true is that thought ! " The capacity for 
that truth, and more, that truth itself, is already developed in our souls ; and it 
may he that, by some undiscovered law, our souls have helped produce its utter- 
ance in the speaker. Other souls, who hear the same thought, respond to its 
utterance, " How silly, how false!" Those other souls have no capacity de- 
veloped for that truth ; they have not that truth developed yet. 

No man ever did, or ever can, interiorly accept religion from another man. 
Yet this may be, and is, outwardly done, and such acceptance is changeable 
and fleeting, like other external things. 

A creed may be ottered to me for acceptance, and I may outwardly accept 
it ; but my soul does not accept it unless it is developed out of my soul ; then 
it- externa] presentation would be useless. Thus, to the soul of man, to that 
property of a man which is immortal, a creed, a belief, a doctrine, a religion, 
taught by another, is nothing worth. All religions, outwardly presented, out- 
wardly taught, belong to outward things, not to the soul. All religions of this 
kind are good For material excellence, but for the soul are worthless. Such are 
religions of which men take cognizance. 

All outward visible religions, all religions taught from books, from the pulpit, 
from the lips and pens of men and women, add nothing to the advancement of 
the bouI heavenward, but tend to enhance the glory of material things. This 
seems right ; for the bouI grows just as fast and do faster, while we polish mat- 
ter, ftfl it does while we disintegrate, break up and destroy forms of material 
beauty. Our BOttl-desires, our heart-longings, arc just the same, let our hands 

do what they will, let our Bemblance be what it will, let our outward garments 

igion be white, black, or any tinge or color, as they may chance to be. 

(tin- goul desires cannot be altered by external religion, but,' in defiance of any 

and all outward influences, make perpetually one eternal longing for happiness. 

n —religion over which this outward world can nave no influence. 

These desires are as much beyond our powers of control a- was our birth — as 

is our immortality, Thej are the spontaneous productions of nature. Every 

sautiful, true, to the soul out of which it proceeds. And 

truth, :i~ It becomes a pan of the soul's intelligence, Is developed out of 



APPENDIX. 145 



the soul itself, in which is sown the seeds of infinite knowledge, to germinate, 
grow, and unfold in fragrance and beauty, forever and forever. 

Seeds always germinate in darkness. So it is of the truths which germinate 
in the soul. In his own bosom man finds his God, immediate ; his heaven or 
his hell, located. 

The sun sometimes looks red, while it is the rising vapors of the earth that 
tinge its pure rays. The sun goes down and the night comes — it is the earth's 
own shadow that makes the darkness. The sun sends off its generous rays the 
same in our night time as it does in our day time. It is the earth itself, held 
in nature's hand, that makes the sun look red, and white, and black. 

So it is with the soul of man — its bloody vapors make a cloud through 
which he sees a bloody God — a God of vengeance. The soul has revolutions ; 
it has day and night. In the day time God is bright and beautiful ; light is re- 
flected from every object, for everywhere his rays of love are seen to fall. The 
night of the soul follows the day of the soul. In its revolution it turns its 
back to God, and in the shadow of itself it sees no God ; God is darkness ; 
God is black. It is in this natural darkness of the soul that a religion for its 
own salvation is conjured up. This is right. Love, which simply is desire, acts 
through all life, lives to death, and through death, and is then immortal. Love 
is desire — desire is religion, and there is not, there never was, a desire of a hu- 
man soul that to itself, and in itself, was not pure love. Through matter, and 
the smoke and fumes of matter, these loves are often clouded, and appear im- 
pure to sensuous vision — to limited perception. From the great source of Love 
uncounted streams flow out to human hearts in channels made by a Parent's 
impartial hand to all his own children. And when we shall see this spiritual 
influx, we shall see God's hand in every stream of love that flows to every 
human heart. Then we shall cease to say that the stream of God's love that 
flows to one heart is better than the stream of God's love that flows to another 
heart; that one religion is better than another religion. Religion is human 
desire, and desire is love, and love is beyond the accidents of time, because it 
is immortal — and every love, in time, or after time, to our perception, 

Will be as pure and white 
As beams of shining light. 

From the filth of refuse matter, or from the cleanest things of earth, it finally 
rises up to God, and mingles with the radiant beauties of celestial worlds. — 
A. B. Child. 



THE SOUL'S AUTHORITY. 

Every individual must make his own soul the standard of authority in 
determining what is true or false in principle, and right or wrong in action. If 
we aim to do right, if our motives are approved by the highest convictions of 
the soul, although we may err in judgment and run into trouble, we shall 
never fall under self-condemnation. The God within us shall bring- us into 
judgment, and if we stand acquitted before that inward tribunal, no other 
"judgment seat" shall have power over the happiness and destiny of the soul. 
— Leo Miller. 



LIVING INSPIRATIONS. 

If the story of Prometheus was once a fable, we are sure that in an import- 
ant sense it is fabulous no longer. Invisible hands have rekindled immortal 
fires on our own altars, to warm the great heart, and to light up the face of 
Humanity. The relations of great thoughts and noble deeds to the realms 
of Spiritual causation are daily becoming more perceptible. Through all the 
inherent forces and essential laws of the celestial, spiritual and natural worlds, 
a Divine energy is infused, and Powers unseen speak in the inspired thoughts 
of living men, who sit like stars at the celestial gates. — S. B. Brittan. 

10 



146 APPENDIX. 



A WORD ABOUT THE DEVIL. 

" Is there anything unreasonable in the hypothesis that Evil came from the 
Does such a supposition detract from the majesty and goodness of 
God .<" 

Answer : These diabolical and theological questions may be, as they have 
been, met in the following style : If evil came from the devil, then the devil, in 
infusing evil into God's creature, acted either with God's consent or without it. 
If be acted with it, then of course God saw that it would not injure the creature, 
since lie bad methods of turning it all to the creature's superior profit, and so 
proving the devil a fool for his pains. If he acted without God's consent, then 
of course you ^ive the devil not only a superior power to God, but a superior 
power over God's own work, or in the sphere of God's own activity. That is 
. you make the absolute creature of infinite Good confess himself the off- 
spring of a deeper paternity — the paternity of infinite evil. — A. J. Davis. 



Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Speak the truth in 
love. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one 
towards another. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, — and 
thy neighbor as thyself. He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, 
how can he love God whom he hath not seen. — New Testament. 



RE-UNION OF FRIENDS. 

Shall we know our friends again ? For my own part, I cannot doubt it ; 
least of all, when I drop a tear over their recent dust. Death does not separate 
them from us here. Can life in Heaven do it ? They live in our remembrance. 
Memory rakes in the ashes of the dead, and the virtues of the departed flame 
up anew, enlightening the dim cold walls of our consciousness. Much of our 
joy is social here. Must it not be so there, that we are with our real friends ? 
Man loves to think it; yet to trust is wiser than to prophesy. But the girl 
who went from us, a little one, may be as parent to her father when he comes, 
and the man who left us, has far out-grown our dream of an angel when we 
meet again. — Theodore Parker. 



SPIRITUALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

The spiritual theory and spiritual communications maintain all the great and 
leading doctrines of Christianity. In regard to the Bible, I cannot better 
« xpresB my views than in the language of the Rev. Adin Ballou : " Whatever 
of divine fundamental principle, absolute truth, and essential righteousness 
there i> in the Bible, in the popular religion, and in the established churches, 
will Btand, It cannot be done away. On the contrary, it will be corroborated 
and fulfilled by spirit manifestations."—///):). N, P. TuHinage. 



CLAIRVOYANT EXAMINATIONS, 

With all the diagnostic and therapeutic suggestions required by patients, 
who may be examined at any distance, by forwarding a lock of their hair; also 

■ letter written by the patient is desirable'. 

Hubbard lias had extraordinary success in the treatment of diseases of 
patients residing hundreds of miles distant. 

Come, all ye that are afflicted, and give him a call; rich. poor, great and 

M,i:,n - Dr. T. BUBBARD, 

Office, 76 South Clark St., Chicago: III. 
18 H Istcd St. 



APPENDIX. 147 



CAN SPIRITUALISM STAND ALONE ? 

In our humble opinion, it can. We would assume no sectarian importance, 
no arbitrary authority, no narrow-minded intolerance, no personal pride or con- 
ceit, no unfraternal spirit, and yet we would insist on asserting Spiritualism as 
adequate to cover the broad ground of all human needs, embracing all that is 
good and true in the past, present and future ; the life of all progress, reform, 
philosophy, religion and revelation. Its foundation is laid in the great heart of 
humanity and on the Biblical facts of all ages and nations, while its dome rises 
over the loftiest empyrean of heaven, forming the boundless cathedral at whose 
altar God and the countless myriads of the eternal world are evermore minis- 
tering in behalf of man. With this view, we have no idea of compromising 
Spiritualism, or seeking to popularize it in the esteem of the opposing world 
or the fashionable church and clergy. We would cordially accept every senti- 
ment dropped in harmony with it, but we are not disposed to count every man 
a Spiritualist who now and then drops a sentence in accordance with our phi- 
losophy. Take some of our so-called, star preachers who are on fat salaries of 
thousands of dollars. Why fidget ourselves] about whether they are Spiritual- 
ists or not ? They are not, and they take every favorable opportunity to thrust 
at us. Spiritualism can live without these men or their church oligarchies. 
There is no such thing as putting and keeping new wine in old bottles. We 
repudiate all such temporizing policies. Spiritualism can and will stand on its 
own merits. — Spiritual Register. 



THE SPIRITUAL DISPENSATION. 

This new dispensation comes to supply the want to the countless thousands 
who are now slumbering in indifference or toiling in infidelity ; to convict man 
of his immortality, and instruct him how to make it happy ; to open to his 
view the great doctrine of progression, involving an eternity of action, and the 
supremacy of his reason over the besetting propensities of his material nature, 
and to impress^upon him forever to love God and his neighbor. — Judge Edmonds. 



MEDIUMS DEFENDED. 

Mediums are our fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers, neighbors and 
friends ; most of them have become mediums contrary to their wish and will, 
and, in spite of the opposition of themselves and friends, the phenomena have 
appeared wherever they chose, and have, in each case, commanded attention 
and enforced conviction of their spiritual origin, until now, in the compara- 
tively short space of ten years, Spiritualism has its millions of mediums and 
believers scattered over the wide world, in every nation and with every race of 
people. 

There has been no collusion between mediums, and yet there is a remarkable 
likeness in all the manifestations Wherever they occur, with whatsoever race of 
people, and in whatsoever language, and through the several phases of the 
manifestations. Beside, wheresoever they occur, and in the presence of per- 
sons who do not believe they are spiritually produced, the phenomena claim 
for themselves a spiritual origin. 

We submit that the history of the phenomena fully vindicates the integrity of 
their mediums, and the hypothesis of deception offered in solution of them has 
ever been weak, malevolent, insufferably unjust, and we submit that it should 
forever be abandoned. — Charles Partridge. 



And behold, there appeared Moses and Elias talking with him. — Matthew. 

And I, Daniel, alone saw the vision ; for the men that were with me saw 
not, but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. — 
Daniel. 



148 APPENDIX. 



GREAT MINDS. 

The world would run into endless routine ; but the perpetual supply of new 
genius, out of the Cause of causes, shocks us with thrills of life. The chief 
day of Lifo is the day when we encounter a mind that startles us by its origi- 
nality and force. Providence sends, from time to time, to each serious mind, 
six o"r seven teachers, who are of the first importance to him in that which they 
have to impart. The highest of these benefit not so much by what they have 
to communicate, as by their spirit and modes of feeling and thought. — Ralph 
\\'(ildo Emerson. 



Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.— 
Paul. 
Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God. — John. 



SPIRITUAL PLATFORM. 

The spiritual platform is broad as the expanded universe and the unfolded 
heavens ; and as free, as unhampered by sectarianism, as are the ethereal ele- 
ments that fill immensity. We have no church, no creeds, no dogmatisms, to 
inculcate or maintain. 

Truth is omnipotent. Therefore, it is sure that every sentiment, system of 
faith, or organization, must sooner or later pass through the trying ordeal. If 
it be sound, and founded upon immutable principles, it will forever stand; if 
false, it is surely destined to decay, to die and disappear. — Hon. S. S. Jones. 



How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who bringeth glad 
tidings. — Isaiah. 

The spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, 
that I heard him that spake unto me. — Ezekiel. 



VISION OF PROGRESS. 

I stand beneath the beamings of a light which is almost darkness because of 
its intensity, and see from out that blazing sun a ray of truth and power that 
reaches each human spirit which has been, or which is to be; not calling, with 
audible voice, humanity into existence, but calling by the very exercise of its 
omnific power, the human race into being, and carrying them on, with eternal 
potency, through these eternal changes, unfolding, unfolding, unfolding, for- 
ever and forever. — J. S. Loveland. 



The agitation of thought is the beginning of wisdom. — A. J. Davi 
I go away, and come again unto you. — Jesus. 
I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. — Joel. 



SPIRITUAL INTERCOURSE. 

Faf back we extend our researches into the depths of antiquity, wc 

i period bo remote that this method of communicating with invisible 

doei nut seem to have existed ; and its universal prevalence among 

ma indicative of a necessity, by a law of human nature, that 

seme channel of Bnpernal wisdom should be constantly open to man through 

"hii h he might red ive instruction, adapted to the ever-varying circumstances 

individual, social, national life.— Win. Flshboiujh. 



APPENDIX. 149 



THE BOOK OF LIFE. 

The Book of Life is composed of the human body and mind. The lids are 
made of the body, the folios of the mental faculties. Upon their leaves are 
written the many deviations of the individual from the path of rectitude. The 
recording angel is the Law of Right, or the central positive principle in Nature, 
which is harmony. The mark of transgression is upon the brow. The indi- 
vidual — the Book of Life — is immortal; it soon passes away to the Spirit 
Land. The record of misdirection appears on the living faculties ; is manifest 
in their deformity and decrepitude — in their inability immediately to advance 
with the higher spirits upon the eternal highway of Love and Wisdom. — A. J. 
Davis, Author of " Nature" " Divine Revelations ," " Great Harmonia," etc. 



INDIVIDUALITY. 

Each man's spirit is an eternal Fact — and to it, every other fact in the 
universe must eventually come. The exact point of time when each person 
" will be better," and do " greater works " than earthy ideal now prognosti- 
cates, will remain with the Law of progressive development to determine. But 
through the alembic of Reason — through the receptive vessels of man's con- 
sciousness — must flow every Truth, and every Fact, also, which a principle 
can possibly embrace. Each, therefore, should have his own Life — his own 
Liberty — his own Experience — his own Truth. To man's mind everything is 
subservient. The heavens above, the earth beneath, aud profoundest princi- 
ples, are all his own. To the Turk and Christian, to the Jew and Gentile, to 
the Serf and Emperor, to the Slave and Master — to each of these, all rights 
and all liberties will come at last. We know this in the depth of spiritual 
wisdom. Most grateful do we feel for the power to realize the face, that influ- 
ences are now being exerted, on all sides, for the amelioration of our universal 
race, and the establishment of individual Rights and Liberties. — Herald of 
Progress. 



OWEN'S BOOK 

"Footfalls on the Boundaries of Another World." By Robert Dale Owen - . 

The sale of this book exceeded six thousand copies, within fifty days; and 
that out of forty newspaper notices, thirty-eight were of a favorable character, 
and some of them recommended the clergy to read it. Also, as a proof of the 
demand for such works by outsiders, or not acknowledged Spiritualists, over 
five thousand of the first edition were sold by non-Spiritualist book dealers. 

Mr. Owen is preparing a second volume. 

Sold by all of the principal book dealers. 



GOD NO RESPECTER OF PERSONS. 

I believe that God is no respecter of persons, or times, or conditions. As 
he is the Creator of all things, thus he looketh with- pleasure alike upon all. 
What we call good and evil are constantly before him, and lo ! he saith, all is 
good. 

God is all-wise, yesterday, to-day and forever; he cannot err. His wisdom 
is not that of mortals. The Record says : " God created all, and pronounced 
it good." And again it says : " There is none good — not one." This proves 
the Record false — the word of man. 

God never contradicts himself; his laws are harmonious, and you will see 
them so when you understand them. He does not say, obey me to-day and 
disobey me to-morrow. He commands obedience always. He bids you live in 
accordance with your nature, not with the light he has given another. Jehovah 
alone has the power of judgment, and you are not the judge of your fellow 
man. Everything is marked with God and goodness. There is nothing lost 
Everything belongs to perfection, and thus to God. 



150 APPENDIX. 



AURORA BOREALIS. 

[The following is a communication, received through a medium, from the 
spirits.] 

" The Electric Fluid pervading the earth's atmosphere is excited and gene- 
rated by the sun's rays, and consequently with the greatest force about the 
equator. From there it is dispensed throughout the earth's atmosphere. 

" Heat evolves the fluid, while cold absorbs and retains it ; therefore the fluid 
generated in excess about the equator, passes in direct lines toward the colder 
regions where it is not generated. 

" While these currents flow without interruption, the fluid is not visible. 

" When the atmosphere intermediate between the poles and the equator be- 
comes excessively cold, the fluid is there absorbed, causing a deficiency at the 
poles. On the atmosphere becoming mild, the fluid rushes toward those parts 
where there is a deficiency, for electricity seeks an equilibrium as water does 
its level. 

" Electricity can be seen only when active in excess ; therefore it is that at 
the time of an Aurora, it becomes visible first at the point of greatest attrac- 
tion, where its rapid absorption causes excessive action, and for this reason the 
flashes of light appear to pass from the polar regions toward the equator, or 
from that point where absorption first commences toward that furnishing the 
supply. 

" Thus all the electric phenomena we witness, are caused by the fluid seeking 
an equilibrium. 

" The same cause which induces the flow of electric fluid toward the poles, 
that of a want there existing, causes the effect produced upon the Magnetic 
Needle." 

Query : May we not justly attribute the violent tornadoes, hail-storms, 
etc., that have occurred during the present season, to the very unusual electric 
commotion witnessed in our atmosphere last September 1 



DIVINE LOVE. 

Enough that the Great Father loves all his children with an undying, inex- 
haustible affection, which many waters cannot quench, nor floods drown, and 
which sin itself has no power to diminish. Enough that all his providences 
tend invariably to some kind and degree of good, forever and ever. Our soul 
is made glad within us, and shouts with an interior joy for what unknown 
mereies must eternally be measured out, and what more than puny human 
thoughts are in the Great Everlasting Love. — W. H. Fernald. 



THE SOUL OF MAN. 

All religious denominations admit that man has within him a something that 

lives alter the body is dead, though none of them are able to define it, or tell 

aught definitely concerning it ; nothing about its shape here, the part of 

the body it occupies, or the form it bears after it leaves the body; yet they 

mtinnally talking about savin- the soul. Spiritualism tells man what 

hil soul is, then shows him how to save it, bv bringing to his presence tho 

realities of the future life, which is but a continuation of this. When the truth 
of Spiritualism is rally realised, lt?is not/i faith, nor vet a belief, but a hioivl- 
:i never be taken away. Then- are four points on which all Spir- 
itualists agree, however much they may differ in things which are mere matters 
of opinion, viz., Existence of Deity, Immortality of the Soul, Eternal Progress, 
! Intercourse. In these four Bhort sentences there is embodied 
ugh for a lifetime, opening wide the gateways of knowledge, and 

; Oling to man his future destiny. It is a rule in' nature, that a person 

or principle, cannot bestow that which it does not or has not possessed. 
— A. II. \\ Litihi). 



APPENDIX. 151 



THE BARBARISM OF THE LORD! 

Senator Sumner, in his speech on " The Barbarism of Slavery,"' says : " I 
have no personal wrongs to avenge ; only a barbarous nature could attempt to 
wield that vengeance which belongs to the Lord." It is a flattering compli- 
ment at the expense of the "Lord." 

But it appears that the Hon. Senator has a Lord, with a vengeance. However 
progressive he may be in his political theories, his " Lord " is decidedlv behind 
the times. Although without doubt, his conceptions of God were "received 
from the orthodox teachings of ancient superstitious fears of a revengeful and 
personating Deity. 



FREELOVISM AND SPIRITUALISM. 

A disconsolate correspondent inquires, Cannot Spiritualism be separated 
from the doctrines of Freelovism 1 

Answer : We have never been able to detect any connection between the 
theory of Spiritualism and the so-called doctrines of Free Love. 

The two are essentially different ; both in their facts and in their teachings. 
The former, Spiritualism, is a beautiful science of Future individual life, based 
upon countless monumental facts of undoubted intercourse between human 
beings and the spirits of the departed ; while the latter, Freelovism, is a social 
theory, entertained and practiced by persons both honest and dishonest, that 
conjugal love between the sexes should be regulated by affinitive inclinations 
only. 

That there are many openly avowed Freelovers, who are also Spiritualists in 
belief, we do not for one moment deny. But we have repeatedly affirmed, as 
susceptible of every proof, that Spiritualism is not responsible for the existence 
of Freelovism, nor can the teachings of Spiritualism be made to sustain any 
unholy conduct on the part of its advocates. We have confidence that every 
justice-loving and candid mind, whether friend or foe to the cause of Progress, 
will exercise judgment and discrimination on the difference between Spiritual- 
ism, per se, and Freelovism, per se, both with respect to their theories and their 
practical influence in society. Because the effect of Spiritualism is universally 
liberalizing, and because it lovingly and hopefully enfolds all mankind in its 
hospitable embrace, are we thence to conclude that all extremisms and every 
error of its adherents are legitimate fruits of the spiritual soil ? Spiritualism 
is a science by itself, and its facts are facts by themselves, and as such the 
doctrine should be studied and weighed in the balance of reason. 

Of Freelovism we say the same. It is a theory by itself, and its legitimate 
practices are practices by themselves in the social fabric, and we believe that as 
such they challenge the most thorough examination. The facts of Freelovers 
should be fearlessly met, and their arguments should be squarely weighed, in 
the limpid light of principles. All petulancy and intolerance will prove ineffi- 
cacious. We have many times urged our objections to the doctrines of Free- 
lovers. They know full well that we do not fellowship their theories, and that 
much of their practice we unutterably abhor. But they also know that we 
advocate free discussion, and justice to opponents, and on this ground we admit 
all subjects to our columns. Free speech is the inalienable prerogative of every 
human mind. — Herald of Progress. 



WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT. 

This book, by A. B. Child, M. D., Boston, Mass., is now ready, and will be 
sent to single orders, post paid, for one dollar, and to dealers at a liberal dis- 
count. It is a peaceful book, yet it is bold and fearless in its utterance. It is 
a curiosity, for it presents new and startling thought. It is replete with asser- 
tions that seem hard to controvert. It presents a religion with which the 
natural desires of every soul have a strong affinity. If the position taken by 
the book be true, it presents to humanity a new religion more beautiful than 
language can express. 



152 



APPENDIX 



MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF SPIRITUALISM. 

By reasoning, practical study, and observation of facts, Spiritualism con- 
firm^ and proves the fundamental basis of religion, namely: 

The existence of an only, omnipotent God, creator of all things, supremely 
just and good. 

The existence of the soul; its immortality, and its individuality after death. 

Man's free will, and the responsibility which he incurs for all his acts. 

Man's happy or unhappy state after death, according to the use which he has 
made of his faculties during this life. 

The necessity of good, and the dire consequences of evil. 

The utility of prayer. 

It resolves many problems which find their only possible explanation in the 
existence of an invisible word, peopled by beings who have thrown off the 
corporeal envelope, who surround us, and who exercise an increasing influence 
upon the visible world. 

It is a source of consolation : 

By the certainty which it gives us of the future which awaits us. 

By the material proof of the existence of those whom we have loved on 
earth, the certainty of their presence, about us, the certainty of rejoining them 
in the world of spirits, and the possibility of communicating with them, and of 
receiving salutary counsels from them. 

By the courage which it gives us in adversity. 

By the elevation which it impresses upon our thoughts in giving us a just 
idea of the value of the things and goods of this world. 

It contributes to the happiness of man upon the earth : 

In counteracting hopelessness and despair. 

In teaching man to be content with what he has. 

In teaching him to regard wealth, honor, and power, as trials to be more 
dreaded than desired. 

In inspiring him with sentiments of charity and true fraternity for his 
neighbor. 

The result of these principles, once propagated and rooted in the human 
heart, will he : 

To render men better and more indulgent to their kind. 

To gradually destroy individual selfishness, by the community which it 
establishes among men. 

To excite a laudable emulation for good. 

To put a curb upon disorderly desires. 

To favor intellectual and moral development, not merely with respect to 
present well-being, but to the future which is attached to it; 

And, by all these causes, to aid in the progressive amelioration of humanity. 

Allan Kardec, Editor of the " Revue Spirite," Paris. 



Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy pres- 
— David. 

Touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out. — Job. 



A Judge Prohibited from Partaking of the Body. 

Judge W , traveling in the State of Iowa, remained over Sunday in a 

small town less than a hundred miles from Lyons, and attended church". At 

the close of the forenoon service, the divine announced thai he would administer 

the " Lord'i Bupper." When distributing the bread and wine to the people, 

he itepped to the Judge and softly whispered: "I am not certain whether von 

hereornot" "Well," said the Judge, coolly, " ] understood you to 

I /'.-■ Supper, and thought I would take von at vour word, and 
• ; hut if it ii a small PRIVATE party of j/our own, I will not intrude ! " 



APPENDIX. 153 



A HOPE FOR ALL! 

The Rev. T. K. Beecher says : " The doctrine of the final restoration of all 
has a home in the best corner of my heart ; and when I reflect," said he, " that 
God is able to do above what we can think or desire, I can but believe that such 
will be the grand result." 

Thus do the Beechers dispose of the Pagan dogma — an endless hell, — begot- 
ten in ignorance, cradled in Asia, and transmitted to us through a corrupt Catho- 
lic priesthood. 



WHEN WAS THAT LAW ANNULLED? 

Most religious sects believe there was a time when spirits returned to earth, 
(their sacred writings are full of many such instances,) but they say the day of 
such revelations has passed away, though that same book says : " God is un- 
changeable, and his laws immutable; the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." 
So if there was a law by which a spirit could communicate eighteen hundred 
or four thousand years ago, that same law is in full force to-day. 



ETERNITY. 

Eternity has no gray hairs. The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows 
old and dies ; the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no 
wrinkles on eternity. Eternity! Stupendous thought! The ever-present, 
unborn, undecaying and undying, the endless chain, compassing the life of 
God — the golden thread, entwining the destinies of the universe. Earth has 
its beauties, but time shrouds them for the grave ; its honors are but the sun- 
shine of an hour ; its palaces, they are but the gilded sepulchres ; its posses- 
sions, they are toys of changing fortune ; its pleasures, they are but as bursting 
bubbles. Not so in the untried bourne. In the dwelling of the Almighty can 
come no footsteps of decay. — Banner of Light, 



HEALTH OF FARMERS. 

There are seven reasons why farmers are healthier than professional men, 
viz. : 

1. They work more, and develop all the leading muscles of the body. 

2. They take exercise in the open air, and breathe a greater amount of 
oxygen from the pure atmosphere of heaven. 

3. Their food and drinks are commonly less adulterated, and far more 
simple. 

4. They do not overwork their brain as much as professional men. 

5. They take their sleep commonly during the hours of darkness, and do 
not try to turn day into night. 

6. They are not so ambitious, and consequently do not wear themselves out 
so rapidly in the contest of rivalry. 

7. Their plcasui-es are simple, and less exhausting. 



HOW TO READ THE BIBLE. 

An old man once said, "For a long period I puzzled myself about the diffi- 
culties of Scripture, until at last I came to the resolution that reading the 
Bible was like eating fish. When I find a difficulty, I lay it aside and call it a 
bone. Why should I choke on the bone, when there is so much nutritious 
meat? " — Christian Advocate. 

[Query. What passage contains the nutritious meat? What one religious 
denomination terms meat, another calls bone; therefore the so-called " World's 
People," — judging from the orthodox religious interpretations — have great 
difficulty in distinguishing the meat from the bone.] 



154 



APPENDIX 



Resolutions of the Spiritual Conference recently held at St. Charles, 

Illinois. 

Hon. S. S. Jones, President, offered the following resolutions, not for adop- 
tion by vote, bat as the crystallization of thoughts upon the subject therein 
embraced, viz. : 

Resolved, That freedom of thought, and the free expression thereof — or in- 
gpiration and revelation — are inestimable privileges and inalienable rights, 
belonging alike to every intelligent being. 

2. '//. wived, That the past, with all its darkness and errors of every age, was 
m in degree, and in accordance with the highest lights then beaming into 
the minds of humanity; and the traditional and written history thereof seem 
as beacon lights to mankind at the present time, to guard them from the shoals, 
quicksands and coral reefs upon which others have foundered : That we should 
not cling to them, nor follow in their pathway, any more than the branches of 
the tree should be the trunk, or the flowers the twigs upon which they grow, 
but that each free-born mind should reach out for higher conceptions of truth, 
new fields of action, and more independence, even to perfect freedom. 

:\. Resolved, That blind submission to precedents, immemorial usages, cus- 
toms, popular opinions, conventionalisms, "or books of authorities, is only 
worthy of those who still live in the darkness of the past, whose shadows still 
loom up in the moral West with blasting influence upon the body politic, giv- 
ing man authority and precedent for every evil deed, but which are being rap- 
idly dispelled by the effulgent rays of the great central luminary, Wisdom. 
K 4. Resolved, That a blind submission to any church, creed, or confession of 
faith, or the pledging of allegiance to any stated opinions of any one man or 
body of men, is a dismemberment of the right arm of individuality, and crip- 
pling to all those higher faculties which are especially enobling to humanity. 

5. Resolved, That in all things the rights of females are as sacred as those of 
males ; that their opinions, when founded in like wisdom, are as worthy of 
being respected, and their privilege of a full, perfect, and free expression of 
opinions, is an inalienable right; consequently, any attempt, by whatsoever 
means, to restrict such privilege, is an unwarrantable assumption of power un- 
becoming an enlightened people. 



LIBERALISM. 

As illustrative of a growing liberality, we would refer to the recent invitations 
of the Revs. Clark and Beccher to the communion service. The Rev. Mr. Clark, 
a venerable orthodox divine, having referred to the broken body and flowing 
blood of our Saviour, as symbolizing his sufferings and martyrdom in attesta- 
tion of the truths he had taught, invited all, "ALL," of whaiever name or 
fold (this would include Universalis, Unitarians, etc.,) in Christendom, " that 
loved the Lord Jesus, and endeavored to lire christian lives, to partake of the 
sacramental bread and wine." This savors but little of the spirit that charac- 
terizes "close communion" Baptist churches — a spirit which when literally 
translated signifies my church, my creed, my serf, mv Jesus, my Heaven, and that 
of such meagre dimensions as to accomodate only the "EL E CT" — a self- 
conceited, Beifish Jew .' 



IMPORTANT QUESTIONS. 

If God ili-lil<es:i portion of mankind, why did he make them 7 
II (.o,l loves one man more than another, where is his impartiality 9 
Do ire need confidence in that power that made us and still rules ami sustains 
11^. to beliere, to hnow, that all tilings are for our good? 



Sinn irti imi hai been called a humbug, and within the past twelve years it 
ha:, madS a -real hum! now let us find the bugl 



APPENDIX 



155 



BRIEF EXTRACTS, 

From Dr. A. B. Child's Book, " Whatever Is, Is 'Right." 

What is Nature? 

Nature is all space and all matter — all, a million times told, that our feeble 
consciousness can yet grasp ; all life, and the manifestations of life ; all that 
has passed, all that is, and all that ever will be. Nature, we conceive, is the 
manifestation of Infinite Power, Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Perfection; it is 
the product of undefined harmony and unutterable beauty. 

What is God? 

All that we know of God is made manifest to us in nature. Beyond this we 
know nothing of God. We say that God is infinite in power, in wisdom, in 
presence, in love, in goodness. In every thing we may recognize the spirit of 
God, and in the nature of all things we have a limited sense of what God is. 
There is no place, no space, no thing, where God is not. There is no power 
that is not God's power ; no condition that is not God's condition ; no presence 
that is not God's presence; no love that is not God's love; no goodness that 
is not God's goodness. Evil has no place in God, so it must be nowhere. 

What is Religion. 

Religion is the natural desire of the soul ; a desire for something that the 
soul does not possess. Every desire is religion to the soul that produces the 
desire. Desire is a wish, a longing for something not yet possessed. What- 
ever the desire may be, whether it is called good or bad, that desire is the 
natural religion of the soul that develops the desire. Religion is natural and 
inevitable; it is a property of human life. Nature governs and directs it; the 
soul produces it. 

What is Death? 

To life there is no death. Life can never die. All life inevitably lives for 
ever. Life is spirit that produces matter that clothes life ; which matter, when 
ripened and matured, falls from the thing of life like leaves that fall from the 
living tree. What we call death is but the falling off of the flesh, blood, and 
bones from the beautiful spirit of enduring life. 

What is Life? 

Life is spirit. Spirit is a property of eternity ; all life, both vegetable and 
animal, we conceive, is immortal. No life can ever cease to be. Life makes 
matter appear animated when in it, and when it goes out again, matter appears 
dead. All we know of life is its manifestations through materialism, which 
afford us but a faint knowledge of its reality. What is life ? It is impossible 
to tell by the aid of material philosophy ; intuition, without the aid of words 
alone, can answer. Life is spirit, and spirit is immortality ; and immortality 
is life — is spirit. 



What is Intuition? 

Intuition is spontaneous thought, developed by natural growth of soul, 
independent of all external influences ; it is the tacit persuasion of the inner 
being; it is the positive knowledge of the soul that comes from whence we 
know not. It is the volition of truth ; it is the light of spiritual realities; it is 
the bright and morning star that is rising in the spiritual firmament now; it is 
the monitor of the soul, and by it the soul learns its first lessons of eternal 
truth, and through eternity shall never cease to learn. 



156 APPENDIX 



What is Human Reason? 

It is one of the guardian angels of our material existence; it is the product 
of the soul acting through matter; it can control material things, not spiritual 
things ; it i> an effect of the soul that is allied to material philosophy, and with 
the material things of earth will sometimes give place to the higher develop- 
ment of intuition. 

What is Infidelity? 

Infidelity is to me that which another believes, and that which I do not 
believe. If I believe in one creed only, I am infidel to all other creeds; if I 
believe in two creeds, I am less infidel ; if I believe in all creeds, I am not 
infidel at all. So the greatest infidel believes that only one creed is right, 
while he that is not an infidel at all, believes that every creed is right; — believes 
that every creed is an effect of a lawful cause that exists in nature. 

What is Hell? 

Hell is suffering. Its conditions are contention and war; a conflict and a 
struggle for happiness ; a desperate fight with the dark phantom called Evil; 
an unmitigated war with the shadow of matter called the Devil, who was never 
yet seen with sensuous eyes or with spiritual eyes. Hell is a soul-conflict, 
which is the effect of soul growth ; it is a struggle between the material and 
the spiritual world ; it is a breaking of earthly affections, and a rising of the 
soul out of the darkness of the material, to the light and beauty of spiritual 
life. 

Where is Hell? 

In the bosom of the sufferer, always. It may be anywhere, it may be every- 
where, where suffering is. There is no avenue of earth where suffering does 
not exist. 

What is Heaven? 

Heaven is rest of the soul. All that is peace, harmony, joy, happiness, is 
heaven ; all that presents evidence of right and good ; all that evinces wisdom, 
order, design in the plan of creation, are emanations of beauty that make up 
the atmosphere of heaven, which every soul in heaven breathes. Heaven is a 
condition of the inner man, that sees goodness and right in everything; order, 
design, harmony, and beauty existing in all places and conditions throughout 
the universe of God. Heaven is that condition of soul which feels that what- 
ever is, is right. 

Where is Heaven? 

Christ has said that " the kingdom of heaven is within us." There is no 
place ;<» look for heaven, except it he within the longing, throbbing soul. If 

anywhere, there heaven is, and each soul for itself finds it there. Heaven is 
everywhere, is anywhere where the soul is in peace, in harmony, and in love- 
with all existence. 

How do we get to Heaven? 
By the natural process of Boal-developraent ; by suffering and conflict ; by 

thfl power of the laws of Qod acting in nature. Never by our own efforts. 

Is Public Opinion Right? 

'if. for it is a lawful effect of a natural cause Thus every 
opinion i- right. Public opinion is always right for that condition of the public 

luin. I thai produce! and supports it. 



APPENDIX. 157 



Who are the Followers of Christ? 

Those who drink the cup of bitterness to its dregs ; those who suffer in the 
gardens of earth ; those whose earthly existence is crucified ; those who bind 
up the bleeding wounds of a suffering humanity ; those who eat with publicans 
and sinners ; those who commune with devils and with angels ; those whose 
affections are set on spiritual things that endure, more than on things of earth 
that perish ; those who recognize a power that transcends the boundaries of 
matter, and reaches out to grasp the limitless beauties that are prepared and 
waiting for them in the many mansions of their heavenly homes. 

Is one Man superior to another Man? 

In his physical being he may be. He may weigh more ; he may have more 
money; he may have more of the philosophies of matter; he may have hand- 
somer morals and a cleaner earthly religion ; he may have a handsomer face 
and form, a handsomer dress ; he may cheat more legally and trade more 
shrewd by; he may talk more fluently and write more elegantly; he may live 
in a handsomer house and repose more comfortably in the arms of luxury. In 
all these earthly things, and a thousand more of a kindred nature, one man 
may be superior to another ; but all this superiority is like the superiority seen 
in the 

" track of feet, 

Left on Tampa's desert strand ; 
Soon as the rising tide shall beat, 

Their marks shall vanish from the sand." 

The soul of one man is not superior to the soul of another man, for if one 
possesses the properties of eternal life and unending progress, the other also 
does. These properties, when recognized, put an end to the thought of supe- 
rior and inferior, as applied to the beautiful soul. Hence one man is not 
superior to another man. 

PHENOMENA OF LIFE. 

Whereas the phenomena of Life has bewildered minute philosophers of all 
ages, many of whom have given to the world vague and irrational impressions 
which have not been sustained by existing facts ; a natural human credulity 
which has given a repressible bondage for ages, while the lovers of power 
have sanctified every error. We dare to present to mankind a rational hypothe- 
sis, derived from existing facts. We all admit that the material or solid matter 
of bodies is composed of earth and water, volatilized into vegetable and animal 
kingdoms. We know this fact, that vegetable and animal solidity decomposes, 
and again returns to its primeval elements. We naturally feel inquisitive as to 
where is that Life and Mind which occupied the tenement; how did it come, 
and where has it gone? I answer, first, The sun's rays of light and heat 
evolving from his radiant body, quickening inanimate to animate life, which 
is the soul of the world, constantly shining on our orb, with a transit of incal- 
culable speed, filling immensity with his rays, having the element of life, vivi- 
fying all matter, " breathes into its nostrils the breath of life." If the material 
bodies of our earth return to their native element, why not the soul, which has 
descended, when its work is finished, tender back, from necessity, to its Al- 
mighty Giver, that which is only lent? Is it more impossible to ascend than 
descend 1 Do not the waters of our earth ascend in vapors through the Father 
of the Universe ? then why not a more subtle fluid ? Is there evidence of a 
more munificent being 1 Are we to reject a positive fact for vague conjecture ? 
Our conscious existence demands our gratitude and admiration that so pure an 
element for our use should not be contaminated nor reverted from its unsullied 
purity. 

We feel as if that awful necessity, Death, had lost its terrors to the philoso- 
pher and the virtuous. How beautiful to contemplate a body lying prostrate, 
dead, which was propelled by an imponderable vitality. We see the body, but, 
alas ! no reason, no speech, to interest us. That which was everything that 



158 APPENDIX. 



ging, baa left the tenement. We look, we hope, in vain to see that 
• i. \W have philosophical evidence of the eternity of matter visible, 
thru why should not that, though invisible, which moves visible matter, be also 
! We may ask, have we, like the lower animals, instincts 1 We have, 
and mankind will never be in the glory of manhood, until every attribute shall 
harmonize in each one's self; I in God, and God in me; then indeed shall we 
in truth say we are the sons of God. — John Ludby. 



WHAT SPIRITUALISM HAS DONE. 

Before the advent of Spiritualism, the masses of the people lay in spiritual 
night. Zioii was mournful and desolate, watching in vain for the Millcnial 
morn to break. The multitudes plodded on with no certain light of the future. 
Children huddled in silent awe over the dead. Death was a blinding, frightful 
. Homes sounded hollow with the wail and woe of bereaved hearts, 
watched lonely at the sepulchre, but no resurrection morn dawned on 
their tear-dimmed eyes. Young men and maidens, aged and middle-aged, 
mourners all, hung desolate over grave-yards and blasted hearth-stones, calling 
for the (bar departed ; and the dying lifted their wan hands and faces towards 
that dread unknown from whose bourne no traveler had supposed to return. 

Hark! sounds were heard. They came again and again. From home to 
home they vibrate, till oceans and continents are crossed, till every ear is 
startled, till the whole globe trembles as beneath shocks of some celestial bat- 
tery, touched by the fingers of Omnipotence, flashing the electric flames and 
rolling the thunder of Sinai over the angel-trod mountain tops of the century. 
jes came, startling the world with overwhelming evidences of immor- 
tality. The weary, working masses lift up their eyes with joy and wonder, and 
new hopes gleam on their toiling way. The young crouch in terror no more, 
but talk of brothers and sisters only gone on before ; and the orphan sees a 
dead mother transformed into a guardian angel, watching over the lone one by 
night and day, and singing songs of the everlasting home. Young men and 
maidens trip on their gladsome way, with new hopes and loves. The lost son 
ol the lone widow comes back, and wipes away her tears with hands reached 
out from the spirit land where the prodigal shall wander no more. Fathers 
and mothers, and the long train of mourners who wept and wailed over the 
DOW life their faces heavenward; and lo ! the veil is parted by beloved 
and the home of " many mansions" hymns to earth the song of angel- 
forever sheltered beneath that Father's "dome, where no clouds lower or 
storms beat on the bared soul. Old men and women, tottering over the grave 
jpair, start up on their staves, bend low their eager cars ; and, lo ! the 
parted of other years come back, and guide their trembling steps up the 
mount of God, where age blooms in eternal vouth, and the sainted dead are 
gathered to their fathers.— Uriah < 



THE SPIRITUAL THEORY. 

of the whole theory of spiritual existence in every school is, 

immanent With man a spiritual essence, which, while the body 

rl thereof, end when ii decays, still remains and continues to 

under Buch change of conditions as the death of the body lias induced. 
1 j . ii is fair to infer, thai the spirit which has been set free from 

the bodv nt one pi reon by death, and continues i^ existence in the distinctive 

ipintual >!ate, i 8 bat an emanation fioin the structure of the bodv which it 

habited, and possesses the Bame general character, as an entity, with 

that which resides in the body o( another person now remaining on the earth. 

irits in their disembodied condition can communicate with those in 

isyto conceive as that they can do bo with their 

tnpnntons, since, in hod, Mates or spheres, they partakeof the same 

•n ; and whatever differences there are between them, are due 

Ot their nature, but to the different states and d( 

in which then- common nature It developed.— Geo. Beekwith. 



APPENDIX. 159 



SPIRITUALISTS IN AMERICA. 

Maine 50,000 Louisiana 20,000 

New Hampshire 25,000 Arkansas 3,000 

Vermont 30,000 Ohio 200,000 

Massachusetts 150,000 Michigan 80,000 

Rhode Island 10,000 Indiana 60,000 

Connecticut 30,000 Illinois 1 00,000 

New York 420,000 Wisconsin 80,000 

New Jersey 6,000 Iowa 26,000 

Pennsylvania 40,000 Minnesota 4,000 

Delaware 3,000 Missouri 32,000 

Maryland 9,000 Kansas 2,000 

Virginia 10,000 Nebraska 2,000 

North Carolina 5,000 Florida 1,000 

South Carolina 3,000 Texas 25,000 

Georgia 7,000 California 40,000 

Kentucky 11,000 Oregon 2,000 

Tennessee .'.22,000 New Mexico 2,000 

Alabama 8,000 Cuba 1,000 

Mississippi 20,000 South America 20,000 

The Canadas 42,000 

Total number of believers 1,600,000 

Increase during the year 160,000 

Nominal believers 5,000,000 

Spiritualists, Eastern continent 800,000 

Number now living, supposed to recognize the fact of spirit inter- 
course 15,000,000 

Population of the United States 30,000,000 

Christian communicants 5,000,000 

Non-professors out of the Ark of Safety, whom Spiritualism seeks 

to save 25,000,000 

» _ -_ 

Entire population of the globe. 1,000,000,000 

Professing Christians 50,000,000 

Supposed to be genuine Christians 5,000,000 

Of doubtful destiny, according to orthodoxy 995,000,000 

— Spiritual Register. 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 

"Watcher on the tower, what of the night V Are not the mists flying, 
the day dawning, and the signs cheering ? Ancient systems are crumbling in 
ruins, as are those old cathedrals on the banks of the Rhine. Our poets, mor- 
tal heroes, and representative men, have literally outgrown them. 

Creeds, I confess, have their use ; so does chaff; so do husks; but when 
truth's harvest-moon ascends eastern skies, leading on starry hosts of Reformers, 
the husks are stripped off to perish. Sectarian Christianity is now making a 
last spasmodic effort. 

It is in the very agonies of a death-struggle, passing away with a "great 
noise." Superstition can only sit now and growl at those who pass his " castle 
of despair." Blind credulity is fast losing its victims. European king-craft, 
and American priest-craft, are conscious of having seen their palmiest days ; 
while custom, the mightv foe of progress, and huge giant of the past, is losing 
his power ; his arms have become palsied ; his teeth chatter in his bony head, 
and his breath is chilled and icy, a certain prophecy of speedy death — a death 
from which, through endless ages, there can be no resurrection. — Rev. J. M. 
Peebles. 



160 APPENDIX. 



RIGHT AND WRONG. 

The readers, previous to perusing this subject, will endeavor to divest them- 
selves of all antecedent creeds, dogmas and opinions, and appeal to the free 
and an trammeled How of Reason, which God has implanted within our souls, 
i is the only God that governs, controls and establishes the idea of the 
true origin and destiny of mankind in the mind of Man. Therefore, it becomes 
jary to receive the Free thoughts and impressions that may appeal to your 
soul. Consequently, you should not form and record any hasty opinions or 
judgments, which will undoubtedly arise in such minds as have previously and 
do at present hold and believe in opinions given by leaders of sects and creeds. 

Believe in the Eternal God. Breathe the pure atmosphere of Heaven. 
Walk in the fields of Nature. Partake of the murmuring waters that flow 
from the Silvery Fountain. And, Record the silent tide of inspiration that 
glides from the fountain of Reason. 

We often judge the acts of our neighbors, but have we a right to? 

What makes a thing right — that is, we call certain things right and certain 
things wrong, but what makes them so ? 

By what means can you tell whether a thing is right or wrong? that is, what 
is your standard of judgment? 

What assurance have you that what you suppose is right or suppose is wrong, 
really is so ? 

If there is any wrong in the universe, who is the author of it? 

If you could sec everything from the standpoint of the Deity, that is, having 
infinite wisdom, do you think that you would see any wrong in the universe? 

We usually judge between right and wrong, from the standard of our con- 
science, which is supposed, by many, to be the internal, reliable self-knowledge, 
or the faculty, power or principle within us, which approves or disapproves of 
our own actions, thoughts, conduct and affections — instantly, or as soon as our 
reflective faculties reconsider the subject. Now, gentle reader, permit us to 
ascertain the origin, and basis of our conscience, or the motive power which dic- 
tates, governs, controls and underlies that principle termed conscience. If man 
was left free to exercise and enforce his thoughts or impressions, that Mother 
Nature willingly and freely grants to him, then his conscience could be con- 
sidered a wise, reliable and righteous judge. But as man is not allowed to 
exercise and enforce- his freedom of thought, being bound by laws, creeds and 
dogmas of a tyrannical nature, his conscience conforms to and with such 
secondary laws ; consequently, his conscience is nothing more or less than a 
slave to his much-boasted freedom and superiority. 

What does conscience assume for its standard to-day, in pronouncing 
judgment ? 

We will inform you, thai the standard is the material or superficial laws that 
have been introduced, inculcated and instilled into the human mind. There- 
fore, conscience judges from those laws. To elucidate it more clearly to the 
investigating mind, we will state that some consciences judge and form an 
opinion from those laws enacted and enforced by Moses; others, from those 
laws established bv Jesus; others still, from the laws that have existed within 
the past century, including the blue laws of the New England colonies; yet 
others, judge from the laws that exist and are in force throughout our land* at 
the present day. Now a majority of those laws are in direct antagonism with 
each other, hence the true cause of the diversity of opinion with the masses 
to day ; ci !i man's conscience judges from its habits and the opinions that have 
surrounded and influenced the mind. Therefore, we enter a solemn protest 
iting of, or being governed bv our consciences, when they have 
Lion and submission by the foregoing enumerated influences. 
.'..v. as i" propose a remedy to check and remove the cause and hin- 
of the mind or soul's development. Let every member of the human 
family discard all antecedent </ortri)t>s, creeds, dogmas and opinions, then appeal 
ill which Cod has given to .MAX. 'and view things in accordance 
with the light that i> set before him by NATURE, which has pointed out the 
■ '1 and follow the dictations of a free and untrammeled 

REAS< >N, that i^ the word ; aye, that is the motive power that will carry 
feK along over Nature's pathway to the gardtnof Paradise, where the 
unfettered m> u 1 will continue t-> unfold in wisdom'and goodness. 



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